Excuse me, but have you heard the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Chr-AI-st? Software has been trained by academics to produce different styles of biblical text, after swotting up on the original sacred texts. The neural network – developed at Dartmouth University and Indiana University Bloomington in the US – is an interesting demonstration of artificially intelligent code poring over writing in one …
"... made burned offerings ..." vs "... burned incense ..."
There is a practical difference but I've no idea if accuracy is important here. That particular difference is probably due to text differences between the two versions and nothing to do with 'style'.
I'd be impressed if it could rewrite an article from El Reg in the style of Revelations, etc.
"... made burned offerings ..." vs "... burned incense ..."
Burned incense is incense, burned, Burnt offerings could be anything from a failed barbeque to young debutantes gutted and then charcoaled in the name of the unspeakable rites of the ancient ones.
Might make all the difference in that unholy ritual to gain wealth and political power you ran through the textual simplifier from the original obscure 12th century occult tract.
"... made burned offerings ..." vs "... burned incense ..."
"burnt offering" has a very specific meaning in the Old Testament, specifically an animal prepared in a certain fashion and burned entirely. (See Leviticus 1.) Incense is not involved. The quoted passage is 1 Samuel 6:15, and there's not ONE SINGLE TRANSLATION that mentions incense - the AI-written passage is factually incorrect.
"If they wanted accuracy, they would have translated it from the original text, [...]"
Is there one? The Dead Sea scrolls are often only fragments. Later versions were Hebrew transcriptions or translations to Greek. Then a Church committee decided what to include or exclude as their schism's official Bible eg the Council of Trent (1546).
The "original text" meaning the oldest source we still have. What books the Council of Trent decided to include or not include is irrelevant to getting at the original meaning of the books they did include.
There were obviously politics around the choice of what books to include There was also at least as much politics around the choice of how things were translated into Latin, and how over a millennium later they were translated from Latin (which was already "gamed" in ways the Catholic church wanted) a second time to English.
> and how over a millennium later they were translated from Latin (which was already "gamed" in ways the Catholic church wanted) a second time to English.
No. Wrong.
"""The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.[9] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. """
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version
>> "If they wanted accuracy, they would have translated it from the original text, [...]"
> Is there one?
Not only is there no 'original text' but there never was. Nothing was written down before 'first temple' - around 10thC BCE. That is because there was no form of written hebrew before then. So for several hundred years it was just oral tradition and changed at the whim of the teller. Or maybe it was just invented much later.
Then in the 3rdC BCE or so all the written copies they could find were brought together and a single authorized version was formed. In some cases two of more of the versions were woven together which is why there are two different accounts in Genesis for several things.
"Holy Computer! We can only assume the inventors not only put their AI through not just rigorous Turing and IQ tests and university exams, but also ascertained that its soul was in a state of grace and if it could *accurately* communicate with the Lord of Hosts through prayer."
Wait, does this mean it's now a sin to just throw the old computers on the scrap heap, coz now they have souls? We need to have old computers homes, where they can be abused for profit instead. Can I now be arrested for carrying a concealed USB stick with Darik's Boot and Nuke on it, except in states where concealed carry is legal? "It's properly licensed Officer, I've published the source code on my web site."
"There is a practical difference but I've no idea if accuracy is important here. "
Ask Isaac.
It could matter for a technical manual being dumbed down. The difference between say "button, knob, switch" helps to distinguish them physically. "Push, pull, slide, rotate" also need to retain their essential action.
"... made burned offerings ..." vs "... burned incense ..."
Indeed, that sticks out.
But perhaps more telling is what hasn't been changed. Namely, archaisms that might be obscure to the modern reader: "the ark of ...", or "the great stone". Instead of making those clearer, they make the material change you picked up on, to cleanse it of something abhorrent to the modern reader.
And there's substituting a proper name for "The Lord" ...
Other researchers have already performed similar experiments with the latter. DeepTingle, a neural network developed by researchers from New York University, could spit out text in the style of Chuck Tingle, a gay erotica author.
Coming from Northern Ireland, I'm quite excited by the idea of plugging the bible one into the above mentioned one.
I'm quite sure I could cause many of the more self-righteous members of the local community to go into a frothing fit.
The sample makes it look like it mainly made different word choices, something even age-old joke programs could do (like the classic "jive filter"). Changing style meaningfully requires more. For example, one author could use shorter sentences, another one longer, present things in different order, use more or less similes, and so on.
text could be re-written to allow a layperson to better understand the meaning of something highly technical
No, it couldn't. If a technical text isn't crap (and then AI rewriting would not fix that) problems with understanding always originate in inability to think in the respective problem domain. Essentially, a lack of context.
You can replace the name of a chemical compound with any other name, drawing or biblical story. It will not magically make the reader able to think about its functional groups, how it might react, ... You still need chemistry background for that. Sure, the text has to explain things interesting/important in the particular case, but if you don't get the basic concepts and can't think about them correctly, there is no substitute for that.
Legalese isn't just written that way to preserve the income of lawyers. It also has to be written that way in order to avoid ambiguity, at least as much as is possible. Otherwise you'd have even more arguments about how law should be interpreted - which would actually mean more legal opinions required and thus even more money for lawyers.
Like any industry jargon, certain words have specific meanings - which should be the same across different laws and contracts. And thus allow you to avoid defining every single term in every single piece of legal writing, every single time. That requires expertise to interpret of course - but so does any important area with a large body of knowledge.
The meaning and is important, but don't discount the needlessly complex writing(or opaque writing style) shoved in there to obfuscate the real meaning to anyone but the anointed few.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, yet it is allowed to be routinely transcribed in a cloud of pompous gobbledygook.
Even the politicians who vote for these laws are not held accountable to read and understand it beforehand.
The ambiguity is largely build-in with poor simple explanations. The courts are then tasked with making sense of it all and it is their opinions that give laws in any quality, teeth.
How much legislation have you actually read? I never have a problem when I have to. It's not always easy, because it deals with complex subjects. But the water regulations are a big part of my job, and they're pretty straightforward. And come with a handy guide.
When I've done jury service we got a paper with the indictments and the legislation in question, which was all pretty straightforward. Plus a judge's summing up to help of course.
And I've had to look up specific laws to write nasty letters in a couple of financial disputes. Got the money back too.
It's only as hard as reading a technical manual. You have to concentrate, and often make notes. Which is because laws are modular. They refer you to a specific section rather than repeat the relevant text, to make them easier to amend later.
You do get a lot of obscure crap in contracts. Much of it seemingly pointless arse covering. But then if you read the technical spec for a building design it's usually 400 pages of irrelevant bullshit about working in avcordance with the right standards, with 50 pages of actual description, 50-100 pages of equipment schedules and 100 pages of drawings. I bet it's no different in many other industries.
Theological AI, what could possibly go wrong?
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Can it re-phrase this into a form that doesn't cause schoolboys to fall asleep?
And spotteth twice they the camels before the third hour, and so, the Midianites went forth to Ram Gilead in Kadesh Bilgemath, by Shor Ethra Regalion, to the house of Gash-Bil-Bethuel-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon, and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots. Here endeth the lesson.
"Can it re-phrase this into a form that doesn't cause schoolboys to fall asleep?"
Balshazar rammed the two spotted camels and the four buttered goats into Rashomon's house with a tent peg, slewing them into little bits. Yeah, then they smoked pot while watching Kim Kardashian's gash for three hours. Here endeth the lesson.
It would help if the first chapter of Genesis was correctly translated as a series of epochs rather than days. The original ancient Hebrew means period of time and not necessarily a day. The same word is used at the start of Genesis 2 to refer to a series of creation days, meaning it has to be epoch as the correct translation rather than a literal 24 hour period.
I thought the first chapter of Genesis went something like:
1And lo, it came to pass that Peter Gabriel had left the building and gone unto the land of the poptastic. 2So Phil Collins laid down the care of his drumsticks and raised up his microphone of destiny. 3And he vouchsafed unto the people, "turn it on again." 4And there was great rejoicing in the land. 5Not 'alf pop-pickers.
It would help if the first chapter of Genesis was correctly translated as a series of epochs rather than days.
Not by much if by help, you mean minimise the barely rational insistence by some believers that the bible be taken literally ending up with creationism and poor dating of the earth.
Someone would still insist on getting their dates by extrapolating from the passages on 'who begat who'.
"Someone would still insist on getting their dates by extrapolating from the passages on 'who begat who'."
From my vague recollections from the one and only time I tried to read the bible, in the bit where they are claiming ridiculously long life times for some people, I think if you substituted "months old" for "years old", they would come down to more likely ages.
I gave up on the old testament when things got horridly violent, and picked things up again at the beginning of the new testament. Apparently I missed the fun and games in Solomon.
This could be ultimately used, for example, to turn complicated information into an easy-to-understand explanation, automatically by a computer, of course.
This makes me think of Douglas Adams' "Reason" software created by WayForward Technologies, where you gave it a desired outcome and the software constructed a plausible line of arguments to lead to the required result.
Dunno why...
This could be ultimately used, for example, to turn complicated information into an easy-to-understand explanation, automatically by a computer, of course.
If the AI can provide a rational, coherent and consistent summation of the events of the Day of Resurrection, incorporating all the reports in the gospels and not leaving anything out, then I might think it could one day have some real-world value.
Surely garbage in, garbage out should be the watchword here. Sure the dataset was fare too tempting to pass up but how universally applicable will a system trained on the Bible be?
For potential problems I refer people to the Electric Monk from the late, still lamented Douglas Adams Dirk Gently books.
For now, we can translate it to Shakespearean. There is an online app for that. This is the Preface of RFC791 in the Bard's lingo:
"This document specifies the dod standard int'rnet protocol. This document is bas'd on six earli'r editions of the arpa int'rnet protocol specification, and the presenteth text draws heavily from those folk. Th're has't been many contribut'rs to this w'rk both in t'rms of concepts and in t'rms of text. This edition revises aspects of addressing, 'rr'r handling, option codes, and the security, precedence, compartments, and handling restriction features of the int'rnet protocol"
I installed a certain official church scripture app from the Play Store that was requesting some odd permissions so I decided to take a peek inside.
And while the permission in question was used for something (somewhat) benign I found something in the "analytics" portion of the apps source that gave me pause.
Let's just say that I believe the information that it was collecting should be just between me and my God!
And anyone that trys to use the sentence: "anonymous data usage" when referring to Android is either ignorant of technology or deliberatly misleading users.
"And I mean that most sincerely ((c) Hughie Green)"
In the 1960s our local radio club asked to see behind the scenes of Granada TV. The reply was not quite what we wanted - audience tickets for a recording of a Hughie Green family show.
I remember the warm-up man telling very blue jokes before the start - even though the audience wasn't just adults. Also a man waving his arms to orchestrate the audience applause. Most of all - Hughie's broad smile which switched instantly to a sour face as soon as a recorded segment ended.
A reverse situation a while before - when the BBC invited the public to an open day at one of their main transmitters. It was a summer's day - and there was a long queue snaking up the country hillside. It seemed that most people thought they would see the stars of the soaps there - "Where's Meg?".
The technical staff gratefully lost their boredom when they realised that at least one group of visitors was actually interested in the large glowing valves etc.
There may be some issues as to lost meaning in AI style-translation.
The Beatitudes as AI translated to the style of Donald:
"Blessed are the poor in compassion,
for theirs is the vote-getting kingdom.
Blessed are they who gloat,
for they shall be exalted.
Blessed are the powerful,
for they shall inherit the nation.
Blessed are they who feign righteousness,
for they shall be venerated.
Blessed are the revengeful,
for they shall see obedience.
Blessed are the faithfully grasping,
for they shall see themselves as good.
Blessed are the warmongers,
for they shall be called Godly.
Blessed are they who fake religiousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of politics.
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