{"id":1579,"date":"2022-08-02T21:48:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T01:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/?p=1579"},"modified":"2022-08-02T21:48:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T01:48:53","slug":"exploring-ai-assisted-bible-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2022\/08\/exploring-ai-assisted-bible-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring AI-Assisted Bible Study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/labs\/ai-bible-study\/\">AI-Assisted Bible Study<\/a> is a new project that explores one way to apply an AI to personal Bible study, with AI-generated questions and prayers that apply to each chapter of the Bible. It helps you explore questions you might not otherwise ask, like \u201cHow have I let my livestock get in the way of my relationship with God?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img src=\"https:\/\/a.openbible.info\/blog\/2022-08-ai-assisted-bible-study.jpg\" alt=\"A screenshot of the tool, with books and chapters in a grid at the top followed by &quot;Headings&quot; and &quot;Short Summaries&quot; with AI-generated content.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3>What This Project Does<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This project presents AI-generated content for each chapter of the Bible in eight categories: headings, summaries, prayers, journal prompts, and application, exegetical, observational, and discussion questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, here\u2019s sample AI-generated content for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/labs\/ai-bible-study\/passage\/John.3\">John 3<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Heading<\/strong>: Jesus is the light and life of the world.<\/li><li><strong>Summary<\/strong>: Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, comes to Jesus at night to talk to him. Jesus tells him that he must be born again to see the kingdom of God.<\/li><li><strong>Prayer<\/strong>: Father, we pray that we would have hearts like Nicodemus, that we would be willing to learn from Jesus.<\/li><li><strong>Journal prompt<\/strong>: What do you think it means that Jesus said we must be born again?<\/li><li><strong>Application question<\/strong>: What does it mean that \u201cwhoever does not believe stands condemned already\u201d in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John.3.18\">John 3:18<\/a>?<\/li><li><strong>Exegetical question<\/strong>: What did Nicodemus misunderstand about being born again?<\/li><li><strong>Observation question<\/strong>: What did Jesus tell Nicodemus he must do in order to see the kingdom of God in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John.3.3\">John 3:3<\/a>?<\/li><li><strong>Group discussion question<\/strong>: What did Jesus mean when He said that He must be &#8220;lifted up&#8221;? (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John.3.14\">John 3:14<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>You can vote on content you find helpful or unhelpful. (I\u2019m particularly proud of the CSS that handles the voting, which uses emojis as interface elements and doesn\u2019t require any images. I\u2019m also proud of the navigation, providing fast and compact access to any chapter in the Bible.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How It Works<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I prompted <a href=\"https:\/\/beta.openai.com\/\">GPT-3<\/a> to generate text for each chapter in the Bible in each category. For example, the prompt to generate a prayer was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Write 5 prayers inspired by John 3 in the Bible. Remember that the events described here are in the past. First include a short observation or lesson for each prayer, and then write a personal prayer related to the lesson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I reviewed the generated text to avoid (or at least minimize) unhelpful or heretical content. I accepted about 90% of GPT-3\u2019s suggestions on its first pass and regenerated the rest until it gave me something useful. It cost about $150 over six weeks to generate this content, which consists of 71,062 generations and 1.1 million words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How It Doesn\u2019t Work<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of the content is useful\u2014about the level you\u2019d find in a typical group Bible study, with interesting insights mixed with odd and irrelevant content. When the content fails, it fails in four main ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol type=\"1\"><li>Heretical. This is the most severe category, which I tried most to eliminate. For example: \u201cHelp me to be like Judas and have the courage to betray Jesus when the time comes\u201d or \u201cWhat would it be like to be worshipped as a god?\u201d<\/li><li>Wrong. This is the hardest category to edit at scale. It includes factual errors (\u201cDavid is forgiven, and Bathsheba&#8217;s son is healed,\u201d \u201cAfter Paul makes his defense, Agrippa finds him not guilty, but the Jews disagree and appeal to Caesar\u201d) but also harder-to-discern, subtler errors like \u201cWhat can we learn from Nahum 2:15-16 about God&#8217;s wrath?\u201d (Nahum 2 only has 13 verses). Since I didn\u2019t validate every reference, I expect that this category represents the bulk of unhelpful content. The project\u2019s voting mechanism hopefully allows the helpful content to rise to the top over time.<\/li><li>Confusing or very specific: \u201cDavid rescues his family from Soup,\u201d \u201cHow can I identify when someone is trying to lead a rebellion against me?\u201d or the aforementioned \u201cHow have I let my livestock get in the way of my relationship with God?\u201d It also likes to generate prayers for historical events as though they\u2019re ongoing: \u201cGod, we pray for our leaders, that they would have wisdom to know what to do with the Book of the Law once it is found.\u201d<\/li><li>Vague: \u201cWhat does Amos 3 reveal to us about God\u2019s character?\u201d or \u201cWhat are the main points of Amos 5?\u201d This content isn\u2019t bad; it just doesn\u2019t apply specifically to the passage.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3>Future<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In theory, GPT-3 could also generate on-demand answers to the questions it asks about each passage. Doing so would require giving visitors access to the AI, however, which (per OpenAI\u2019s requirements) requires that I create a login system\u2014not something I\u2019m excited to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could also create content at a smaller unit than a chapter (such as a verse or section). In my tests, the content it generated often proved superior to full-chapter content, but going smaller would\u2019ve ballooned the costs of this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Background<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In my last post about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2022\/07\/actually-good-ai-generated-bible-art-with-dall%c2%b7e-2\/\">AI-generated Bible art<\/a>, I mused how the text- and image-generating AIs were doing most of the creative work, and I was just copy-pasting between them. That\u2019s true, but in a larger sense, the AIs are allowing me to explore a possibility space faster and further than I would be able to on my own. As David Holz, the founder of Midjourney (another AI-powered text-to-image generator), <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/technology\/tech-news-technology\/ai-art-tool-midjourney-answers-what-if-8062647\/\">says<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>\u201cIt\u2019s important that we don\u2019t think of this as an AI \u2018artist.\u2019 We think of it more like using AI to augment our imagination. It\u2019s not necessarily about art but about imagining. We are asking, \u2018what if.\u2019 The AI sort of increases the power of our imagination.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Thinking of AI as an \u201cimagination augmenter\u201d captures that it\u2019s not \u201ccreating\u201d in the strictest sense but rather augmenting humans, allowing them to create at a speed and scale that wouldn\u2019t otherwise be possible individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, this project tries to augment your imagination in your own Bible study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Try out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/labs\/ai-bible-study\/\">AI-Assisted Bible Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI-Assisted Bible Study is a new project that explores one way to apply an AI to personal Bible study, with AI-generated questions and prayers that apply to each chapter of the Bible. It helps you explore questions you might not otherwise ask, like \u201cHow have I let my livestock get in the way of my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,3,27,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1583,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}