Unwrapping the unknown past | PRATIK G. K | TEDxYouth@KRMPublicSchool

TL;DR

A 15-year-old student uses AI and OCR technology to decipher ancient inscriptions and translates them into an extinct language.

Transcript

please look at the image that I have given you now try and understand what it is all right if you did not get it now at my friend RFI the what is given there Rafi uh please read it out all right yeah that is indeed true that translates to which is name which is the name of the language that I am trying to decide for so it was able to decipher what ... Read More

Key Insights

• 🤙 Pra GK utilized artificial intelligence and OCR technology to decipher ancient inscriptions and translate them into an extinct language called "What."
• 🖐️ The usage of camera-based applications like Google Lens and Microsoft Lens played a crucial role in recognizing and analyzing characters.
• 💁 Pra GK collected and scraped data automatically to obtain a large amount of information, which he structured to simplify it for the AI model.
• ❓ The AI model's accuracy, initially at 88%, was improved through continued training to achieve a final accuracy of 96%.
• ❓ The translations were verified and confirmed by an epigraphist, ensuring the accuracy of the results.
• 🤙 Pra GK authored a book called "What Tal," containing translations of the entire "What" language, which was released by the Vice Chancellor of a university.
• 🌱 Pra GK plans to extend his translation efforts to other ancient languages, such as Phoenician, Sumerian, and Egyptian pictographic scripts.

Questions & Answers

Q: How did Pra GK decipher the ancient inscriptions?

Pra GK used artificial intelligence and OCR technology to recognize and analyze the characters in the inscriptions and translated them using an AI model.

Q: What is OCR?

OCR stands for optical character recognition, a technology that uses a camera to recognize and interpret text characters in images.

Q: How did Pra GK obtain the data for his translation project?

Pra GK scraped data from online sources, collected the information on the inscriptions, and structured it to make it understandable for the AI model.

Q: How did Pra GK improve the accuracy of his translations?

Pra GK trained the AI model with the structured data multiple times, refining it to increase the accuracy from an initial 88% to a final 96%.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• A 15-year-old student named Pra GK from India explains how he used AI and OCR technology to decipher ancient inscriptions and translate them into an extinct language called "What."

• Pra GK used applications like Google Lens and Microsoft Lens, which rely on camera usage and optical character recognition (OCR) to analyze and recognize characters in images.

• He collected and scraped data from online sources, structured it, and fed it into an AI model, which he trained to improve the accuracy of translations from What to modern-day Tamil.