 |
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
 |
Reading Ancient Records Of Humanity, With AI's Help
O, artificial intelligence, we have so many hopes for you! For example, we're hoping you can help us understand ourselves over the long centuries.
It turns out that in his 1984 novel Heretics of Dune, science fiction author Frank Herbert gave us a peek into the House Records of the Bene Gesserit, an organization with archives that spanned many thousands of years of human activity.
The holoprojector flickered with its continuing production above the table top - more bits and pieces that she had summoned.
Taraza rather distrusted Archivists, which she knew was an ambivalent attitude because she recognized the underlying necessity for data. But Chapter House Records could only be viewed as a jungle of of abbreviations, special notations, coded insertions, and footnotes. Such material often required a Mentat for translation or, what was worse in times of extreme fatigue demanded that she delve into Other Memories. ...You could never consult Archival Records in a straightforward manner.
(Read more about Herbert's Bene Gesserit House records)
What a mess! And we actual non-fictional human beings are in no better shape than the Bene Gesserit:
[Just to name one repository,] the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland is home to approximately 160,000 volumes of literary and historical manuscripts dating back to the eighth century—all of which are written by hand, on parchment, in languages rarely spoken in modern times.
To preserve these historical accounts of humanity, such texts, numbering in the millions, have been kept safely stored away in libraries and monasteries all over the world...
Can anything be done, since we don't even have Mentats to help us? Especially since it's now clear that there are endless millions of untranslated texts in archives all over the world.
Now, researchers at University of Notre Dame are developing an artificial neural network to read complex ancient handwriting based on human perception to improve capabilities of deep learning transcription.
"We're dealing with historical documents written in styles that have long fallen out of fashion, going back many centuries, and in languages like Latin, which are rarely ever used anymore," said Walter Scheirer, the Dennis O. Doughty Collegiate Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame. "You can get beautiful photos of these materials, but what we've set out to do is automate transcription in a way that mimics the perception of the page through the eyes of the expert reader and provides a quick, searchable reading of the text."
(Via Measuring Human Perception to Improve Handwritten Document Transcription and TechXplore)
Artificial intelligence to the rescue! Of course, Technovelgy.com has lots of science fiction references to AI as well as many many stories on the intersection between real-world AI studies and science fiction - see Artificial intelligence in science fiction.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/29/2021)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories -
("
Culture
")
Do Aliens Have A 'Non-Interference' Prime Directive?
'... it was against the law for our people to visit Earth.' - George Parsons Lathrup, 1897.
Collie Dog Suit Fulfills His Dream - Of Walking In Public As A Dog
'The Lon Chaney of the interstellar set.' - Roger Zelazny, 1976.
Jonathan Swift in 1726 Predicted AI-Generated Crap Overwhelming Amazon In 2023
'...the most ignorant person... might write books... without the least assistance from genius or study.' - Jonathan Swift, 1726.
Virtual Reality: Is Technology Alone Enough To Fully Enter A New World?
'Otherwise what good are the Perky Pat layouts to them?' - Philip K. Dick, 1969.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
 |
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Barista Robot Perfects Latte Swirl With Multi-DOF Wriggle
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
Vendetta 2023 All-Terrain Skateboard Could Use Neal Stephenson's Smartwheels
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'
Safe Street Rebel Autonomous Vehicle Luddites And Schachner's 1931 Robot-Deranger
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'
The Electric Balance Bicycle And The Decline Of Western Civilization
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
'Droplet' Battery Microscale Power Pack
'...a power pack the size of a pea.'
ARX-5 Doing Robot Arm Dancing
It's Data's day - at last.
CD, DVD Bit Rot And PKD's Civic Notification Distorter
'...copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one.'
Inbiodroid Prometheus 2.0 Telepresence Avatar Robot
My prize robot, tall, dashing would speak and act for me...
Amazon One Is Frank Herbert's Palm Lock
'A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines.'
DroneDog Ground Security Robot Dogs From Asylon
'I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog.'
Who Knows What Might Be Found When Visiting A Metal Asteroid?
'...inspect the tiny speck of matter that swam toward them out of the bottomless void.'
Giant Lunar Surface Test Bed Built On Earth
Astronauts first walked the site, then flew over the site at a few hundred feet in a small Cessna.
FlyCroTug Drones Work In Teams Now
'It slid smoothly out of its cell like a metal wasp emerging from its nest, and hung in midair.'
Zai Pits (West Sahel) And Dew Collectors (Dune)
'Each is planted most tenderly in its own little pit.'
Delivery Robots Being Bullied, Robbed
'Robots have worse problems than anybody.' (A Present for Pat)
Zoom Education Idea Is 100 Years Old
'... the frosted glass squares began, one by one, to show the faces and shoulders of a peculiar type of young men.'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
 |