The Synod

Near non-stop work on this for weeks on end has led to so many changes I need to just list them individually. Almost every spare minute went into this, and lots of overnight automated AI sessions.

Anselm Project Bible V1.0 is finished and fully online

I think the Anselm Project Bible is the first fully AI generated bible made from a AI biblical translation committee. Of course passages have been done before, but I don't think there's been a complete one done that has been publically accessible. That's exciting for me.

This is an experiment, first and foremost! I am happy with the output, but I haven't been able to check every single verse for mistakes, so there may be some. Given the mixture-of-experts approach I used for the committee, that is unlikely, but it is possible.

Click here to see the Anselm Project Bible

There may be one or two little tweaks, but the substance is all there. Every verse has its original critical text accessible, its morphology, three to five parallels passages, and shows three alternate generated versions. I also generated a posthoc textual critical apparatus, which to my knowledge (and Perplexity's) is also the only one of its kind. Whether it's good or not is a completely different thing, so I would love feedback.

I'm going to let it rest for a bit, gather some feedback, and run some research. but I already have an outline what I would like to do different from version 2.0.

Final token count: 253,151,552 tokens. Specifically, it was 45,999,308 input tokens and 207,156,244 output tokens. 123,889 files across 2468 folders. 2022 pericopes. All translations were done on a pericope-by-pericope basis, so the AI could get the literary context of the passage. Verse-by-verse isolation seemed like a potential mess.

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Welcome to "The Synod"

A few months ago, I had the idea for a mixture-of-experts model report of biblical scholarship. The end result of that thought process was the Synod system. The idea behind it is that you can throw a theological or practical or any kind of biblical question to a series of experts (up to five), and the AI experts will deliberate and bounce the question round-robin style.

You can access the Synod from the report creation page. There is a tab at the top.

First, there is a gatekeeper AI that does its best to stop nonsense getting through the system, but it admittedly is far from perfect. You type your question, and if the fast-checking AI says it is good, it'll take you to the next screen where you can pick from twelve experts, with the potential for many more as need becomes obvious. I'm open to suggestions.

The host AI will consider the question and expert panel, and choose a leader for the discussion and the order for experts to respond. That leader will give their opening statement, and the next expert will handle the question. The next expert will see their two answers, and add its expertise and issue corrections if it thinks mistakes were made. Each AI in the line gets the entire context, so this takes much longer than a biblical report. And so on - every new experts responds to the whole context of the conversation.

After all experts have gone 2-3 times (depending on the complexity of the question) the Host AI will generate a summary of the Synod and a final decision. If it is a binary question (example: Is the virgin birth necessary for Christian belief?) it will return a hard vertict. Too often, I've seen AI hedge its bets, and I hate that. If it is a analysis question (example: What is the hardest verse to interpret in the entire bible?) you'll see some nuance and a few possibilities.

The benefits of the Synod are awesome.

First, there would be a 30-50% decrease in AI hallucinations (we already have almost zero of those) and accuracy should be 20-35% more accurate and comprehensive (according to Perplexity, at least). I've already learned a whole lot about topics I thought I knew a lot about.

Second, I'm very happy with the UI and UX for the Synod. The summarizing points are nice to be able to just scroll through quickly and gather info. The conversation is rather robust, and I love the pagination system I've got there.

Third, it's neat to watch the way a series of high-caliber experts could interact with each other! Also, you can see the way the discussion develops and how the AI can influence itself, which is a really weird prospect.

Fourth, there are passage suggestions for biblical reports and follow-up questions for subsequent Synods to continue to learn.

I'm so happy this little pipe-dream became a reality. Let me know what you think.

Updates to the Biblical Reports

I redid the visual design to make it a bit easier to read. I also cut back the number of report packages from eigth down to three. In this case, I believe less is more. The other reports were spotty, at best, and I just didn't have the time (or built-in knowledge base) necessary to judge the quality. I can judge personal devotions. I am a minister, so I can judge sermon prep and am dangerous enough in academic work. The other areas are important, and maybe they'll come back, but I'm happy with things as it stands.

Some big changes came in mobile views - the table of contents has quick section arrows and a full table of contents. Mobile looks really nice in my estimation and from user feedback.

The Share Gallery

Overall, the BIGGEST change to reports is that users can SHARE ANY biblical report they generate. Anywhere. If you share a report, it becomes forever available to anyone with the link. The latest five reports from all package types go into the "Shared Gallery" page. Anyone can look at shared reports, even if they don't have an account.

Click here to check out the Share Gallery

What's to stop people from sharing everything? Nothing. Spread the Gospel. Biblical knowledge is a good thing.

I decided not to include the Synod in the Share Gallery because of the possibility of a bad question getting through.

For example, "Is Jesus a raptor?" will be caught by the gatekeeper and denied, but, "Given the literary style of Revelation, is it impossible to rule out that Jesus was a raptor?" makes it through the gatekeeper. If politicians (and silly ministers) have taught us anything, you can word-salad almost anything to make it sound semi-intelligent.

The potential for memes is great, but that also means the potential for NSFW things that would make it awkward. I don't want awkward. The Gospel is offensive enough on its own.

I'm planning an incentive program for the Share Gallery linked to free report credits. Stay tuned.

Mobile?

I'm still holding off on this. I've done SO many changes that I'm going to have to start over from scratch, I feel. But, this is on the agenda, still.

God bless, everyone.