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AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

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Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#61

Post by Kosturdistan »

yorwba wrote: post #3
Kosturdistan wrote: post #2

A lot of loonies make this claim, but Tom's work is credible enough that it's being reviewed by linguistics experts at Rutgers and Cambridge. Additional validation: his approach produces results. He's translated over 300 words, and that's never been done before, and his solution actually solves some problems in Linear B. Tom is an AI engineer, and Claude Code was key to his work. Disclosures: I know Tom socially, and…

Then why is there no link to the actual write-up?

The only write-up at the moment is my blog post, hopefully that changes in the coming weeks.

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#63

Post by tennfown »

fooster wrote: post #46

Alot of the comments in this thread are disappointing. Rather that celebrating an achievement (whether or it is validated yet), many of you seem to want to put him down, or make it seem like claude did all the work. Claiming that claude did all the work is patently ridiculous. Claude is a tool, like any other. The corpus of linear A is ~7500 characters across ~1500 inscriptions and claude, no matter how smart, doesn'…

[flagged]

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#64

Post by Kosturdistan »

_verandaguy wrote: post #15
kelseyfrog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use Claude, like the author, to reproduce the result.

This isn't really a reasonable approach, is it? The original prompts aren't provided, nor is the original context; even then, you can't really treat a stochastic system like an LLM as a major component in reproducibility.

Claude code was used to organize the material and to run simulations. The simulations were to determine the likelihood that the text was Semitic vs Tom got lucky. Tom has assigned probabilities to each of the syllables he has proposed sound values for.

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#65

Post by Kosturdistan »

iwontberude wrote: post #32
_verandaguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a reasonable approach, is it? The original prompts aren't provided, nor is the original context; even then, you can't really treat a stochastic system like an LLM as a major component in reproducibility.

Actually it is because Claude did the work and being a lay person isn’t really that high of a bar.

Claude helped, but did not do the work. This was a human dude who had a very helpful assist from Claude

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#67

Post by Kosturdistan »

dwroberts wrote: post #25
Kosturdistan wrote: post #2

A lot of loonies make this claim, but Tom's work is credible enough that it's being reviewed by linguistics experts at Rutgers and Cambridge. Additional validation: his approach produces results. He's translated over 300 words, and that's never been done before, and his solution actually solves some problems in Linear B. Tom is an AI engineer, and Claude Code was key to his work. Disclosures: I know Tom socially, and…

You know him socially but is there a reason you’re writing this rather than him? It looks like he has his own web presence. Cynical read would be you’re stealing his thunder a bit by prematurely announcing this before it’s fully confirmed

Tom knows I'm a freelance writer and decided to give me the scoop. He's more interested in linguistics than he is in journalism.

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#68

Post by bawolff »

kubb wrote: post #8
Kosturdistan wrote: post #2

A lot of loonies make this claim, but Tom's work is credible enough that it's being reviewed by linguistics experts at Rutgers and Cambridge. Additional validation: his approach produces results. He's translated over 300 words, and that's never been done before, and his solution actually solves some problems in Linear B. Tom is an AI engineer, and Claude Code was key to his work. Disclosures: I know Tom socially, and…

Let's wait until it's been verified.

How does an expert even verify something like this?

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#69

Post by Kosturdistan »

iwontberude wrote: post #31
dwroberts wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know him socially but is there a reason you’re writing this rather than him? It looks like he has his own web presence. Cynical read would be you’re stealing his thunder a bit by prematurely announcing this before it’s fully confirmed

What thunder? Claude did the work and used a human to interface with experience and causality better.

Claude helped, it did not do the work. It would have taken Tom more time to crack on his own, and it would have been harder, but the key insights were Tom's not Claude's.

Re: AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A

#70

Post by humodz »

stratocumulus0 wrote: post #52
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #35

The reason linear A is so difficult is that the total remaining corpus of Linear A text is ~7500 characters, spread out over ~1500 inscriptions. If you have a 4k screen, you can fit all remaining Linear A text on your screen at once, in 14pt high font.

An in addition to that, a vast majority of documents are lists which consist of a "header" (1 to 3 words) and word-number pairs afterwards. An another common class are small clay seals with 1, 2 characters carved into them. It's likely that in both cases, we may be dealing with abbreviations. Some of the lists end with "ku-ro" and a number that's the sum of all the previous numbers, oddly frequently off by one.

It would be amusing if archaeologists in the future also end up spending countless hours trying to decipher my shopping lists and poor math skills
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