Startseite
Podcasts
60-Second Science Podcast
Using AI to Understand the Thoughts of the Dead

Using AI to Understand the Thoughts of the Dead

60-Second Science vor 1 Jahr

Could Chatbots Bring Ancient Civilizations Back to Life?

0:00

12:04

Writings and records are how we understand long-gone civilizations
without being able to interact with ancient peoples. A recent
opinion paper suggested we could feed chatbots writings from the
past to simulate ancient participants for social psychology
studies. Similar survey experiments with modern participant data
closely matched the outcomes of the real people they were based on.
We speak with the opinion paper’s co-author Michael Varnum, an
associate professor at Arizona State University, about what the
limits of this spooky proposal are and what the ghosts of cultures
past could teach us today. Recommended reading: “Large
Language Models Based on Historical Text Could Offer Informative
Tools for Behavioral Science,” by Michael E. W. Varnum et al., in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 121, No.
42, Article No. e2407639121; October 9, 2024
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407639121 Inside the
AI Competition That Decoded an Ancient Herculaneum Scroll
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-ai-competition-that-decoded-an-ancient-scroll-and-changed/
E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions,
comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something
new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for
Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is
produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison
Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel
Feltman. Our show is edited by Jeff DelViscio with fact-checking by
Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was
composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
megaphone.fm/adchoices