This is the first full-text example as far as I know (Gen Z bible doesn't count).
There are hallucinations and issues, but the overall quality surprised me.
LLMs have a lot of promise translating and rendering 'accessible' more ancient texts.
The technology has a lot of benefit for the faithful, that I think is only beginning to be explored.
Answer: The sky. The ancient people who wrote the bible thought the sky was a solid dome that separated "the water's above" (aka rain) from the water's below. God lived on the other side of this dome.
This is confirmed later in Genesis with the Tower of Babel story.
They tried to reach this dome by building a tower. And "god" was so offended by their ignorance and stupidity (which he perpetrated) that he decided to punish them.
The "faithful" obviously reject this simple interpretation in favor of something more obtuse and mystical.
Imprecise language is a common human feature of a lack of understanding - something we all suffer from. We call LLM's "AI" without fully understanding what's artificial and what's intelligence.
The story of faith is, in some ways, the story about how little we know about the universe. That doesn't mean there's no progress. If anything, it shows there is an end goal.
The ancient narratives of Babel and Genesis reduce the incomprehensible (Creation, the Divine) into elements we as humans at that time could understand.
How else could our ancestors have possibly related to the divine?
There is nothing "divine" in the story to relate to.
It is a collection of unscientific, erroneous myths and beliefs that were popular in the culture at the time it was written --- by men. The only reason any divinity can still be subscribed to it is that these basic facts have been somewhat obfuscated through translation.
I truly appreciate the fact that they put this right up front in the book. Interpreted for what it is, it succinctly obviates the need for much further consideration or worry.
Beyond that,
>there are hallucinations and issues
seems like a deal-killer for a religious text. Yes, all translation by humans is an act of interpretation on some level, and so there's lossiness in all translation – but the difference between a human carefully weighing their reasoning for a particular choice of rendering vs. an LLM that is basically weighted dice that might land totally wrong is a categorically-different thing, not a question of degrees.
mikemarsh•2h ago
Although written primarily for Orthodox Christians, there are valuable cautions here to consider regardless of your tradition: https://www.jordanville.org/artificialintelligence
epsteingpt•2h ago
In this instance, I think it has the opportunity to democratize deep religious study in ways that used to be reserved for serious scholars.
e.g. Do you know what the word "daily" in the Lord's Prayer comes from?
Questions like these can engage the mind and spirit.
I hope more people use the tools to fully explore their faith, instead of outsourcing prayer and sermon creation to the LLMs.
bwestergard•1h ago
Did you read the essay? It says:
"Instead of being merely “agnostic” as many argue, digital technology has amplified the ability of the princes of this world to feed the fallen man, to make him more docile and distracted while installing beliefs, morals, and feelings that are acceptable to the secular spirit of this age. AI may be the final technology that is weaponized to create this new man before the Antichrist arrives, who will be the human manifestation of AI---an ever-helpful problem-solver who people mistakenly feel they cannot live without."
Your position is diametrically opposed to this one.