The Amazon Rainforest is a dazzlingly huge and sophisticated ecosystem, a six-million-square-kilometer world unto itself. Regardless of its central position in numerous indigenous origin tales and traditions stretching again millennia, it is largely been ignored by mainstream archaeology. Typical considering held that such an apparently uncooked and dynamic expanse of wilderness could not probably have performed any necessary position within the cultural evolution of human beings.
That is altering, nonetheless, now {that a} raft of latest archaeological discoveries is flipping the unique paradigm on its head and corroborating what indigenous peoples have lengthy insisted: that the Amazon was as soon as house to a wealthy, flourishing civilization.
These discoveries have largely been enabled by applied sciences reminiscent of satellite tv for pc imagery and Gentle Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Now OpenAI needs so as to add synthetic intelligence to that arsenal.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s guardian firm, filed an April 2025 lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI programs.)
AI-powered treasure hunt
On Friday, the corporate introduced a contest aimed toward uncovering beforehand unknown archaeological websites within the Amazon by way of using its o3/o4 mini and GPT-4.1 fashions. It is a sort of AI-powered treasure hunt that challenges anybody with a Wi-Fi connection and a ardour for exploration to sift by way of and analyze open-source information — together with, however not restricted to, colonial diaries, indigenous oral traditions, satellite tv for pc photographs, and scientific papers — to pinpoint the attainable places of fabled metropolises just like the Misplaced Metropolis of Z and El Dorado.
“Now, for the primary time in historical past, anybody can conduct archaeological analysis,” OpenAI wrote in a weblog put up asserting the competitors, which it is dubbed the OpenAI to Z Problem. “AI empowers us to grasp the historical past of tens of millions of people that lived, struggled, and thrived way back.”
The corporate has offered an inventory of optionally available “checkpoints,” which function a sort of technical roadmap of subchallenges as groups work towards the ultimate objective. Last submissions are due at midnight Japanese Normal Time on June 29 and will probably be scored by affect, ingenuity, and reproducibility.
Three winners
Following an inside evaluation course of, the work of 5 separate groups deemed most promising will probably be livestreamed with a panel of consultants and OpenAI staff members, together with “a thriller AI chief,” in line with the weblog put up. The profitable staff will probably be chosen by a vote and can obtain funding to proceed their analysis, together with a chance to go to the Amazon and work straight with native archaeologists (pending permission from related authorities).
Every of the highest three winners will even obtain a combined cash-and-API-credits prize of $250,000, $100,000, and $50,000, respectively. For extra info and to enter the problem, go to this hyperlink.
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