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Enterprise AI Analysis: A multi-modal dataset and method for bone-level association prediction in oracle bone inscriptions

Enterprise AI Analysis

A multi-modal dataset and method for bone-level association prediction in oracle bone inscriptions

This research introduces the first public benchmark dataset and a novel multi-modal deep learning method for predicting bone-level associations in oracle bone inscription sentences. It aims to address the challenges of fragmentation and incomplete contextual information, significantly enhancing the digital reconstruction and understanding of ancient Chinese texts.

Executive Impact

By providing accurate bone-level association predictions, this AI method dramatically improves the efficiency and reliability of oracle bone rejoining, unlocking historical insights previously fragmented. This innovation offers significant value for archaeological, linguistic, and historical research, accelerating the understanding of ancient Chinese civilization.

0.9587 AUROC Score
0.7390 F1 Score
9,935 Inscriptions Dataset Size

Deep Analysis & Enterprise Applications

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The Oracle Bone Inscription Dataset with Additional Contextual Reconstruction (OBID-ACR) is the first public benchmark for bone-level association prediction. It integrates glyph images, OBI sentences, and primary/secondary character tags, addressing limitations of previous datasets by focusing on multi-modal information for fragmented oracle bones.

3551 Oracle Bone Fragments in OBID-ACR

Dataset Construction Process

Extract OBI Sentences from OBIMD
Retain Fragments with ≥2 Characters
Identify Additional Rejoined Cases
Compile Final OBID-ACR Dataset

The proposed Siamese BiLSTM with Glyph-based Embeddings for Bone-level Sentence Association Prediction (SGBSAP) uses a VAE to learn character-level representations from glyph images. A Siamese dual-tower BiLSTM network then processes sentence pairs for association prediction, outperforming context-based methods.

0.9587 SGBSAP AUROC (Glyph-based)

Comparison of Embedding Strategies

Strategy Benefits Limitations
Glyph-based Embeddings (VAE)
  • Captures rich visual information
  • Effective for flexible word order OBIs
  • Outperforms context-based methods
  • May not capture broader contextual nuances
Context-based Embeddings (SGNS/CBOW)
  • Captures co-occurrence patterns
  • Useful for more structured texts
  • Less effective for sparse, short OBIs
  • Struggles with OBI's flexible word order
Combined Multi-modal (SGBSAP-Weighted)
  • Integrates visual and contextual info for comprehensive understanding
  • Can introduce noise or distort glyph embedding space if not carefully weighted

Case studies demonstrate SGBSAP's effectiveness in rejoining fragmented oracle bones, even when physically distant. It correctly identifies same-bone relationships and provides high association scores, though it shows limitations with substantial character loss.

Rejoining Directly Connected Fragments (H51 & H64)

Context: Fragments H51 and H64, from the Oracle Bone Inscription Collection, were directly connected. Sentence (a) from H51: 'Divination: do many people perish in a certain locality because of warfare?'; Sentence (b) from H64: 'Divination: heavy personnel losses in warfare, prayers for divine protection.' These sentences clearly address the same underlying issue, and the broken edges and handwriting style were consistent.

Findings: SGBSAP achieved an association score of 0.9996, ranking within the top 1.49% of all sentence pairs in the test dataset. This result strongly indicates these fragments can be rejoined.

Rejoining Not Connected Fragments (H30107 & H30109)

Context: Fragments H30107 and H30109, from the Oracle Bone Inscription Collection, were not directly connected but belong to the same source bone. Sentence (a) from H30109 and sentence (b) from H30107 are basically identical in structure and theme: 'Divination: the king of Shang should not perform rain sacrifice in July.' Character glyph styles were very consistent.

Findings: SGBSAP achieved an association score of 0.9550, ranking within the top 5.81% of all sentence pairs. This indicates these fragments can be rejoined.

Limitation Example (H16756 & H16773)

Context: Fragments H16756 and H16773, from the Oracle Bone Inscription Collection, were rejoined by experts. Sentence (a) from H16756 records a divination concerning whether disasters occur within the next ten days. Sentence (b) from H16773 exhibits a similar syntactic pattern but with substantial missing characters. The missing content leads to significant loss of contextual information.

Findings: SGBSAP achieved an association score of 0.0102, ranking within the top 12.72% of all sentence pairs. This indicates that SGBSAP incorrectly assessed their association, highlighting limitations with substantial character loss and reliance on contextual completeness.

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Estimated Annual Savings $0
Annual Hours Reclaimed 0

Implementation Roadmap

A structured approach to integrating cutting-edge AI into your enterprise workflows.

Phase 1: Data Acquisition & Preprocessing

Compile and clean the multi-modal Oracle Bone Inscription Dataset (OBID-ACR), ensuring authenticity and quality.

Phase 2: Glyph Embedding Model Development

Design and train the Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to learn robust character-level glyph embeddings from images.

Phase 3: Association Prediction Model Training

Train the Siamese BiLSTM network using glyph-based embeddings to predict bone-level associations between sentence pairs.

Phase 4: Empirical Evaluation & Case Studies

Conduct extensive experiments, compare with baselines, and validate the model's performance on real-world oracle bone rejoining cases.

Phase 5: Deployment & Integration

Integrate the SGBSAP model into archaeological and historical research tools for digital reconstruction and interpretation.

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