AI didn’t decode the cryptic Voynich manuscript — it just added to the mystery


If you were compiling a list of the world’s 100 oddest objects — the weirdest stuff that human civilization has excreted over the millennia — then you’d have to leave room somewhere for the Voynich manuscript. It’s 600 years old, written in a language no one can read, and full of diagrams no one understands. It is a genuine, bonafide, world-class mystery. This is presumably why when newsrooms around the world had a chance this week to publish stories claiming it’d been “decoded by artificial intelligence,” they leapt at the opportunity.

Except, of course, it hasn’t. Not at all. According to experts, the Voynich manuscript remains as inscrutable as ever. But understanding why this new research fails to “decode” the text, and what exactly...

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via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2rZwiT6"

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