"Just Wow!" Wikipedian Impressed by How Skillfully AI Already Reads Intricate Tarashkievica Manuscripts
Belarusian Wikipedia editor Uladzislau Chakhovich shared on Facebook his experience working with the new version of the AI program Gemini. He "fed" the program a scan of a sheet on which Adam Stankevich, a well-known Belarusian socio-political and religious figure of the first half of the 20th century, laid out his testament. The result exceeded all expectations.
"Another AI milestone has been passed. I was uploading photos from an online exhibition dedicated to Adam Stankevich to Wikimedia Commons, and out of interest, I decided to check if the new Gemini 4 Argon, which has already impressed with its work with sources, could read Cyrillic Belarusian text written in pre-reform orthography.
Previously, I was impressed by how neural networks handled the most intricate Latin handwriting, but they struggled with Cyrillic ones," writes Uladzislau Chakhovich.
The current result, however, pleasantly surprised him:
"Just wow! It was especially impressive that it deciphered the word "хусьцё" (clothing/linen), without inventing another one. How it read the word "Дзень" (Day) at the end, I find it hard to understand.
See for yourselves:
"My last will. In case of my forced departure from Vilnius, or in case of my death, I transfer all my movable property (library, clothes, linen, radio, typewriter, and everything else) to Mariyana and Hanna Shutavichenka (Vilnius, Polatskaya St. 9—4) for their full ownership. This is my humble gratitude to them (especially Mariyana Sh.) for their long-standing selfless work and care for me. Our relationship has always been the purest and sincerely friendly. In my long-standing work in God's field and for the Belarusian people, my tears and my joy were also their tears and their joy. My heart is full of gratitude and affection for them. I entrust them to God's care and I myself entrust myself to their prayers and their dear memory. I also entrust to their memory my dear old Mother and the young daughter of my late sister Hanna, Valtsia.
Priest Adam Stankevich, handwritten.
Vilnius, 7.VII.1944, on the Day of the Apostles of the Slavs, the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius."
Commentators on the post were also impressed by such high-quality deciphering of not the most legible handwriting. One of them, however, pointed out that the AI, instead of the word "такжа" (also) present in the original, twice wrote the incorrect "такса". The author of the post himself also noted that in the original, the name Mariyana was written with two "n"s, while in the Gemini version, it became one (which, by the way, corresponds to the current literary norm). But these trifles do not spoil the overall positive picture.
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