Artificial intelligence has helped decipher an ancient papyrus scroll, which was transformed into a lump of blackened carbon by volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The first passages of readable text reveal never-before-seen musings from a Greek philosopher. The discovery nabbed the 700,000 grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge, and used a combination of 3D mapping and AI techniques to detect ink and decipher letter shapes within segments of scrolls known as the Herculaneum papyri, which had been digitally scanned. The combined efforts of the winning team members – Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger – could pave the way for more discoveries from additional papyrus scrolls that were once housed in a library in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum. "I think it's going to be a huge boon to our knowledge of ancient philosophy, just gigantic – a staggering amount of new text," says Michael McOsker at the University College London, who was not involved in the discovery.