AI decodes Napoleon’s letter and Notre-Dame records
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Carter Church, a 27-year-old artificial intelligence engineer, used an AI model created by OpenAI to decipher a coded letter from Napoleon from 1809.
The message detailed French and allied troop positions and had remained unsolved for over 200 years. Without AI, breaking the code would have taken weeks, but the model completed the task in six hours, demonstrating AI’s ability to work persistently on complex problems. Artificial intelligence is also helping researchers access ancient, fragile texts.
Scientists are using X-rays and AI to virtually unroll and read carbonized papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum, a city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. In June, researchers fully virtually unfolded a papyrus revealing a Stoic philosophical treatise. In France, the Inria institute is developing AI tools, through the “Back in Time” project, to transcribe and decipher historical encrypted correspondence. Historians are also using AI to process massive amounts of manuscripts.
The Midrash project is digitizing 10 million pages of Hebrew manuscripts, creating a searchable database comparable to a large social network, while the e-NDP project is using AI to transcribe 14,600 pages of medieval records from Notre-Dame de Paris, revealing details about the cathedral’s daily life.
