9 ms·

AI-based writer identification for the unknown scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls

47 points by Hooke 5y ago

spac 5y ago
I kid you not, I read “The Elder Scrolls”, and was very amazed that someone tried to figure out the different authors of the many books in the game... time to rest I suppose.
- valyagolev 5y ago
  Michael Kirkbride is the dude. He still writes them
  - xkeysc0re 5y ago
    Apparently him and Todd Howard are on good terms and chat every so often. Would be so great to have him back for ES6
  - Agentlien 5y ago
    He is certainly the most well known and responsible for much of the more interesting and widely discussed lore. Especially regarding religion and metaphysics. But he is not the only one. For example, the original writer, who has produced some of my favorite in-game books, is Ted Peterson[0]. There is a great interview with him on YouTube[1]. [0] https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ted_Peterson https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ted_Peterson [1] https://youtu.be/AegrlefXuwE https://youtu.be/AegrlefXuwE
- xkeysc0re 5y ago
  Someone, or rather, many someones, have figured it out. https://www.imperial-library.info/ https://www.imperial-library.info/
- 7373737373 5y ago
  This reminds me of "Divine Divinity", which also had many books lying around: https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Divine_Divinity_books_and_notes https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Divine_Divinity_bo...
- astrange 5y ago
  I think the Elder Scrolls may actually have more complicated religion than the Bible. Just try and interpret this one: https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/CHIM https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/CHIM People make it sound like Bethesda games are so buggy they have more bugs than game. Maybe this is because they spend all their time writing lore instead of reading QA reports.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
One question I have whenever algorithms are used to try to figure out multiple authors: was this algorithm tested on works we know that were written by a single author? People change. Maybe the scribe developed back problems or RSI or arthritis. Even writing styles can change. What is the range of single person variability, and how does that compare with the variability we see in the work?
- emmelaich 5y ago
  That's mentioned but dismissed. I would think age might be a factor though. Some scribe took a break for whatever reason returning to the task after 10 years or so? > Although one cannot rule out completely that the clear separation between the two halves of the manuscript and the difference in writing patterns are due to a change of writing implement (a different pen), writing fatigue or some injury that the writer suffered when moving on to the second half of the manuscript, the more straightforward explanation is that a change in scribes occurred.
  - ars 5y ago
    A new scribe is a more straightforward explanation than a new pen?
- Jedd 5y ago
  A similar question is around what size training data do we have where we know works had different authors. My understanding is there's very little original material from this era to work with - as all biblical canon is replicas, from a handful, to many dozens of generations / copies distant.
  - ars 5y ago
    They use author to mean "person using a pen", not author in the normal sense of the person composing the text. There's plenty of scribal material in the Judaic world, they should try their algorithm on it and see if it works.
jbunc 5y ago
Oral tradition put into text, so not entirely the same as grouping the writers. More like who transcribed what. Maybe the difference was who heard the story in a given pattern.
- lukeboi 5y ago
  From my understanding the DSS weren’t the original transcriptions of the oral traditions
NotChina 5y ago
Given the long history of Akkadian and cuneiform usage by all of their neighbors, it's not as if they had to forsake writing. Just look at the ruins of Ebla for a comparison of civilization at that time.
qayxc 5y ago
So PCA, k-means clustering and manual visual inspection counts as AI now? There's no ML involved in the approach, just plain old statistics and feature extraction. I fail to see how any of this relates to AI unless we broaden the definition to a point where it becomes useless and everything that uses an algorithm becomes "AI"...
- piokoch 5y ago
  After years of not working in statistics I've decided to learn something new, so I've purchased a Coursera MOOC course on that new kid on the block - Machine Learning (now rebranded as AI I think). To my surprise (I wanted to learn something new) all the "old stuff" was there, ML turned out to be some variant of statistical inference with all its typical methods applied (like logistic regression, clustering, etc.). The new things were: deep neural networks ("normal" NN but with more layers) and total lack of thinking in terms of model - ML keeps adding more and more variables to the model, as much as data we have, no matter if it make sense or not. If the "model" is over-fitted, then, well, let's add some additional quadratic term to the equation, it seems to be helping... Maybe... Sometimes. So, yes, AI is just old stuff, rebranded and fed with much, much more data. From what I see AI hasn't changed much over the last years. AI seems to be pretty effective in everything that is machine generated data set, as it is easily quantified and has simple representation - That's why it is so good in tracking people - there is a huge amount of data coming from people devices, they are nice and clean. It is also good in picture analysis - again data are pretty clean (pixels) and easily quantified, what is even more important, so it easy to "train" AI. When it comes to something more complicated like, for instance, purchase recommendation we get what we get: you bought a fridge, good, you will see fridge adds for next half a year.
- fumblebee 5y ago
  Looking beyond the term and you realise the approach is neither impressive or novel. Such rebranding is endemic in article headlines like this. The term “AI” may be in vogue but 99.9% of the time it’s really just putting lipstick on a pig.

47 points by Hooke 5y ago

spac 5y ago

I kid you not, I read “The Elder Scrolls”, and was very amazed that someone tried to figure out the different authors of the many books in the game... time to rest I suppose.

valyagolev 5y ago
Michael Kirkbride is the dude. He still writes them
- xkeysc0re 5y ago
  Apparently him and Todd Howard are on good terms and chat every so often. Would be so great to have him back for ES6
- Agentlien 5y ago
  He is certainly the most well known and responsible for much of the more interesting and widely discussed lore. Especially regarding religion and metaphysics. But he is not the only one. For example, the original writer, who has produced some of my favorite in-game books, is Ted Peterson[0]. There is a great interview with him on YouTube[1]. [0] https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ted_Peterson https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ted_Peterson [1] https://youtu.be/AegrlefXuwE https://youtu.be/AegrlefXuwE
xkeysc0re 5y ago
Someone, or rather, many someones, have figured it out. https://www.imperial-library.info/ https://www.imperial-library.info/
7373737373 5y ago
This reminds me of "Divine Divinity", which also had many books lying around: https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Divine_Divinity_books_and_notes https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Divine_Divinity_bo...
astrange 5y ago
I think the Elder Scrolls may actually have more complicated religion than the Bible. Just try and interpret this one: https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/CHIM https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/CHIM People make it sound like Bethesda games are so buggy they have more bugs than game. Maybe this is because they spend all their time writing lore instead of reading QA reports.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

One question I have whenever algorithms are used to try to figure out multiple authors: was this algorithm tested on works we know that were written by a single author? People change. Maybe the scribe developed back problems or RSI or arthritis. Even writing styles can change. What is the range of single person variability, and how does that compare with the variability we see in the work?

emmelaich 5y ago
That's mentioned but dismissed. I would think age might be a factor though. Some scribe took a break for whatever reason returning to the task after 10 years or so? > Although one cannot rule out completely that the clear separation between the two halves of the manuscript and the difference in writing patterns are due to a change of writing implement (a different pen), writing fatigue or some injury that the writer suffered when moving on to the second half of the manuscript, the more straightforward explanation is that a change in scribes occurred.
- ars 5y ago
  A new scribe is a more straightforward explanation than a new pen?
Jedd 5y ago
A similar question is around what size training data do we have where we know works had different authors. My understanding is there's very little original material from this era to work with - as all biblical canon is replicas, from a handful, to many dozens of generations / copies distant.
- ars 5y ago
  They use author to mean "person using a pen", not author in the normal sense of the person composing the text. There's plenty of scribal material in the Judaic world, they should try their algorithm on it and see if it works.

jbunc 5y ago

Oral tradition put into text, so not entirely the same as grouping the writers. More like who transcribed what. Maybe the difference was who heard the story in a given pattern.

lukeboi 5y ago
From my understanding the DSS weren’t the original transcriptions of the oral traditions

NotChina 5y ago

Given the long history of Akkadian and cuneiform usage by all of their neighbors, it's not as if they had to forsake writing. Just look at the ruins of Ebla for a comparison of civilization at that time.

qayxc 5y ago

So PCA, k-means clustering and manual visual inspection counts as AI now? There's no ML involved in the approach, just plain old statistics and feature extraction. I fail to see how any of this relates to AI unless we broaden the definition to a point where it becomes useless and everything that uses an algorithm becomes "AI"...

piokoch 5y ago
After years of not working in statistics I've decided to learn something new, so I've purchased a Coursera MOOC course on that new kid on the block - Machine Learning (now rebranded as AI I think). To my surprise (I wanted to learn something new) all the "old stuff" was there, ML turned out to be some variant of statistical inference with all its typical methods applied (like logistic regression, clustering, etc.). The new things were: deep neural networks ("normal" NN but with more layers) and total lack of thinking in terms of model - ML keeps adding more and more variables to the model, as much as data we have, no matter if it make sense or not. If the "model" is over-fitted, then, well, let's add some additional quadratic term to the equation, it seems to be helping... Maybe... Sometimes. So, yes, AI is just old stuff, rebranded and fed with much, much more data. From what I see AI hasn't changed much over the last years. AI seems to be pretty effective in everything that is machine generated data set, as it is easily quantified and has simple representation - That's why it is so good in tracking people - there is a huge amount of data coming from people devices, they are nice and clean. It is also good in picture analysis - again data are pretty clean (pixels) and easily quantified, what is even more important, so it easy to "train" AI. When it comes to something more complicated like, for instance, purchase recommendation we get what we get: you bought a fridge, good, you will see fridge adds for next half a year.
fumblebee 5y ago
Looking beyond the term and you realise the approach is neither impressive or novel. Such rebranding is endemic in article headlines like this. The term “AI” may be in vogue but 99.9% of the time it’s really just putting lipstick on a pig.