Narrative Goldmine

Text Summarisation

8 min read

Properties

Type
  • Class
Resource
  • urn:ngm:class:text-summarisation
Domain
  • spatial-computing
Status
  • stable
Maturity
  • emerging
Is a
Requires
Enables
Generated
  • by: process:vault-migrate/1.0 · at: 2026-09-22T12:41:39.024503178Z
Legacy term id
  • AI-0370
Links
Page resource
  • urn:visionflow:page:9ba6da6403e75df49de2ffeb56a19fa59cae2cfc8630a0bf73c15e1a4854bf7c
Related to
Uses

Text summarisation is the NLP task of producing concise, coherent summaries that capture the essential information from longer documents or collections. Systems employ extractive methods (selecting key sentences) or abstractive methods (generating new text) using transformer architectures such as BART, PEGASUS, and T5, with applications spanning news aggregation, research synthesis, and document retrieval.

Semantic Classification

Content

  • Text Summarisation is the NLP task of producing concise, coherent summaries that capture the essential information from longer documents or document collections. Summarisation systems employ extractive methods (selecting key sentences) or abstractive methods (generating new summary text) using transformer models to enable applications in news aggregation, document analysis, and information retrieval.

Implementation Approaches

  • RAG can utilise various search techniques:
    • Full-text search for exact matches
    • Vector search for semantic similarity
    • Metadata filtering for structured queries
    • Graph database traversal for relationship-based retrieval
    • Hybrid approaches combining multiple methods

Technical notes

  • For the A6000 CRM docker

    machinelearn@MLAI:/mnt/mldata/GenerativeAI$ cd ../githubs/ComfyUI-Docker/
machinelearn@MLAI:/mnt/mldata/githubs/ComfyUI-Docker$ ls
docker-compose.yml  docs     megapak      README.zh.adoc  scripts  storage_known_good
Dockerfile          LICENSE  README.adoc  rocm            storage
machinelearn@MLAI:/mnt/mldata/githubs/ComfyUI-Docker$  docker run -d -it --rm --name comfyui-mega --gpus '"device=1"' -p 8182:8182 -v "$(pwd)"/storage:/root -e CLI_ARGS="--port 8182" yanwk/comfyui-boot:megapak

  • to contact Ollama from within docker

    curl http://172.17.0.1:11434/api/generate -d '{
  "model": "llama3-8B",
  "prompt": "Why is the sky blue?"
}'

Lessons from MMORGS

  • The concept of ‘instrumental play’ was introduced by literary theoristWolfgang Iser in his 1993 essay “The Fictive and theImaginary.”iser1993fictive Iser divided play into two categories,free play and instrumental play, based on their relationship to goals.In his view, play becomes instrumental the moment it has a goal or a setof rules. The application of this concept to massively multiplayeronline games was later explored by sociologist T.L Taylor in her 2006book ‘Play Between Worlds.’taylor2009play According to Taylor,instrumental play is a goal-oriented approach that values efficiency,expertise, and strategy optimization. The point of playing is not toreach the end but to find the best way to get there.
  • The distinction between instrumental play and fun is often seen as afalse dichotomy. The two are not mutually exclusive but exist intension. Optimization can result in player behaviours that are simply nofun, but achieving goals or improving skills can also bring enjoyment.René Glas in his book ‘Battlefields ofNegotiation’glas2013battlefields describes the movement betweeninstrumental and free play in World of Warcraft, which has thedistinction of evolving across entirely different iterations of theInternet.
  • These virtual worlds of massively multiplayer online games are”interactively stabilized” systems, the result of the interactionbetween game designers and players. The social codes of practiceestablished by players can shape what is considered legitimate play.Success in these games is dynamically defined by consensus, as seen inMark Chen’s study of World of Warcraft ‘Leet Noobs.’chen2011leet
  • Tom Boellstorff conducted a study of user experiences in SecondLife,serapis2008coming which was criticized for not involving reallife or other websites or software in the analysis. The virtual worldsof massively multiplayer online games are not enclosed and players canengage with these games through various platforms, such as Discord,Twitch, Twitter, and Google Docs, without physically inhabiting thevirtual world. This concept of “paratext” was first introduced by Frenchliterary theorist Gerard Genette. He saw a book as containing the textof the book and additional components, such as the cover, title,foreword, etc., that are necessary to complete the book but not part ofthe primary text. These additional texts influence the meaning of theprimary text. The definition was later expanded by Mia Consalvo, whodefined paratext as any text that “may alter the meanings of a text,further enhance meanings, or provide challenges to sedimented meanings.”Examples of paratext include reviews, pre-release trailers, etc.Kristine Ask observed the impact of paratext on theorycrafting expertisein World of Warcraft, which was later confirmed by the rise of twitchstreams. Mark Chen’s dissertation Leet Noobs focuses on how AddOns inWorld of Warcraft can become essential agents in raid groups by assumingcognitive load. The concept is based on the idea of object-orientedontology and actor-network theory.cole2013call These theories arecomplex and contested, but the boundaries between real people andvirtual AI actors in virtual social spaces are certainly blurred.
  • Virtual spaces are not separate from the real world, but are instead anextension of it. The key factor in making a virtual world compelling isnot its realism, but the fact that people give meaning to their lives byentangling themselves in projects with others, even when those othersare not other people. Worlds become real when people care about them,not when they look like the real world.

AI Research Assistant

  • Elicit is an AI research assistant that aims to make high quality reasoning abundant
  • Currently focused on text-based workflows, especially literature summarization and helping users understand what is known on a topic based on existing research
  • Long-term goal is to go further into reasoning and decision making

Roles under most threat

AI in Education and AI

  • I think the Rabbit is something I would buy for kids?! (lol, that didn’t work out)
    • Multimodal interfaces, incorporating voice, text, and possibly visual or gestural inputs, would make the process more accessible and intuitive.
    • These interfaces would cater to a diverse range of users and preferences, allowing instructions to be given in various formats.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3KrLw4xNAiEeylzm7gg0qr?si=e59f027065884c33

Key Points

  • VVIA Challenge Objective: Utilize AI to interpret texts from ancient scrolls damaged in the eruption that destroyed Pompeii, without unrolling them.
  • Historical Significance: Scrolls believed to contain lost works from ancient Greece and Rome, offering insights into classical literature, philosophy, and possibly early Christian texts.
  • Technical Challenges and Solutions: The challenge involved using advanced medical imaging and AI to decipher the charred scrolls. Innovations included recognizing ‘crackle’ patterns as text and employing AI models to identify ink traces undetectable to the human eye.
  • Winning Achievement: The team identified 15 columns of text, suggesting a work by Philodemus on the pleasures of music and food. This success demonstrates AI’s potential to reveal historical texts thought to be irretrievably lost.
  • Future Implications: Beyond the immediate findings, the challenge underscores the role of AI in historical preservation and research. It sets the stage for further discoveries within the remaining scrolls and potentially revolutionizes our understanding of ancient civilizations.
  • Stage Two Goals: Focus on automating the segmentation process to lower costs and enable the scanning of all 800 known scrolls, aiming for broader excavation and exploration of the villa’s remains.

Summary

  • The VVIA Challenge, with a $1 million prize, focused on utilizing AI to decipher ancient papyrus scrolls preserved yet damaged by the eruption that destroyed Pompeii. These scrolls, potentially containing lost historical, philosophical, and literary texts, were discovered in a villa believed to belong to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law in Herculaneum. The challenge was to develop AI techniques to read the text without physically unrolling the scrolls. The winning team successfully read extensive portions of the scrolls, revealing works possibly by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. This endeavor not only showcases the power of AI in unlocking ancient secrets but also highlights the blend of technology, history, and human curiosity.

Resources

Provenance

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