Elon Musk says He’ll help fund AI effort to decipher Roman Scrolls

Elon Musk will provide financial support to a project using artificial intelligence to digitally unfurl ancient scrolls that’d been unreadable for centuries.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported this week on a breakthrough in the project, which is known as the Vesuvius Challenge and run by Nat Friedman, the former chief executive officer of GitHub. A group of contestants successfully took scans of scrolls from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which had been charred by the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii, and used AI to read entire paragraphs from them.

The Musk Foundation, the billionaire’s charitable arm, will offer the funding, Musk wrote in a post to his social network X on Wednesday. In a message to Bloomberg, Musk said he didn’t know how much he’ll contribute. “Whatever amount is useful,” he wrote. “I’m in favor of civilizational enlightenment.”

Friedman said the next stage of the effort will enable the team to read entire scrolls and will cost about $2 million. Deciphering every scroll so far uncovered from Herculaneum could cost as much as $10 million, Friedman said.

“I was shocked and thrilled to see Elon tweet his support of the next stages of the Vesuvius Challenge, and we welcome any contribution he will make!” Friedman wrote in a message to Bloomberg. “All donations are extremely helpful. We’re in touch with Elon’s team and working out the details of their support.”

Also, read these top stories today:

Cookies are crumbling! The little data files that helped companies stalk users around the web are vanishing. But that doesn’t mean a return to privacy. Some interesting details in this article. Check it out here.

Meta will challenge the EU! Meta announced on Wednesday it would challenge in court an EU demand for fees under a content moderation law, which is the EU's legal weaponry to rein in Big Tech. Read all about it here.

Microsoft to cut more jobs! The FTC seeks a response after Microsoft's plans surfaced revealing that the Satya Nadella-led company aims to cut 1900 jobs from the newly acquired Activision Blizzard. Dive in here.