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As global political leaders, key figures in the tech industry and academics meet at Bletchley Park in the UK for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence\\u2014 discussing in particular the risks of these new technologies and how they could be mitigated\\u2014we look at a project that reflects AI\\u2019s extraordinary potential. The Vesuvius Challenge aims to use AI to unlock the texts in the papyrus scrolls that were carbonised when the Roman city of Herculaneum was covered in ash and pumice after the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 79 AD. Brent Seales, the computer scientist behind the project, discusses the technologies involved and his optimism for a positive outcome. Then, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of research and honorary professor of Roman Studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, tells us about Herculaneum and the Villa of the Papyri where the scrolls were recovered, and considers what the papyri might contain. In modern-day Italy, the country\\u2019s culture minister has designated Pietrangelo Buttafuoco\\u2014a right-wing journalist and author whose books include a literary portrait of the notorious former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi\\u2014as the next president of the Venice Biennale. It is the latest in a series of appointments that opposition politicians describe as \\u201cchilling\\u201d. We talk to The Art Newspaper\\u2019s correspondent in Italy, James Imam. And this episode\\u2019s Work of the Week is Dorothea Lange\\u2019s photograph Maynard and Dan Dixon (1930). Philip Brookman, the curator of a new exhibition dedicated to Lange\\u2019s portraiture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, tells us more.

Vesuvius Challenge, visit scrollprize.org

Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 5 November-31 March 2024

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