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Month: October 2017

AI Reformation: How Tech can Empower Biblical Scholarship

In a past blog I talked about how an AI-enabled Internet was bound to bring a new Reformation to the church. In this blog, I want to talk about how AI can revolutionize biblical scholarship. Just like the printing press brought the Bible to homes, AI-enabled technologies can bring advanced study tools to the individual. This change in itself can change the face of Christianity for decades to come.

The Challenges of Biblical Scholarship

First, it is important to define what Biblical scholarship is. For those of you not familiar with it, this field is probably one of the oldest academic disciplines in Western academia. The study of Scripture was one of the primary goals for the creation of Universities in the Middle Ages and hence boasts an arsenal of literature unparalleled by most other academic endeavors. Keep in mind this is not your average Bible study you may find in a church. Becoming a Bible scholar is an arduous and long journey. Students desiring to enter the field must learn at least three ancient languages (Hebrew, Greek and usually Aramaic or Akkadian), German, English (for non-native speakers) and usually a third modern language. It takes about 10 years of Graduate level work to get started. To top that off, those who are able to complete these initial requirements face dismal career options as both seminaries and research interest in the Bible have declined in the last decades. Needless to say, if you know a Bible Scholar pat him in the back and thank them. The work they do is very important not only for the church but also for society in general as the Bible has deeply influenced other fields of knowledge like Philosophy, Law, Ethics and History.

Because of the barriers of entry described above, it is not surprising that many who considered this path as an option (including the writer of this blog) have opted for alternative paths. You may be wondering what that has to do with AI. The reality is that while the supply of Bible scholars is dwindling, the demand for work is increasing. The Bible is by far the most copied text in Antiquity. Just the New Testament alone has a collection of over 5,000 manuscripts found in different geographies and time periods. Many were discovered in the last 50 years. On top of that, because the field has been around for centuries, there are countless commentaries and other works interpreting, disputing, dissecting and adding to the original texts. Needless to say, this looks like a great candidate for machine-enhanced human work. No human being could possibly research, analyze and distill all this information effectively.

AI to the Rescue

As you may know, computers do not see the world in pictures or words. Instead all they see is numbers (0s and 1s to be more exact). Natural Language Processing is the technique that translates words into numbers so the computer can understand it. One simple way to do that is to count all the times each word shows up in a text and list them in a table. This simple word count exercise can already shed light into what the text is about. More advanced techniques will not only account for word incidence but also how close they are from each other by meaning. I could go on but for now suffice it to say that NLP starts “telling the story” of a text albeit in a numeric form to the computer.

What I describe above is already present in leading Bible softwares where one can study word counts till Kingdom come (no pun intended). Yet, this is only the first step in enabling computers to start mining the text for meaning and insight. When you add AI to NLP, that is when things start getting interesting. Think more of a Watson type of algorithm that you can ask a question and it can find the answer in the text. Now one can analyze sentiment, genre, text structure to name a few in a more efficient way. With AI, computers are now able to make connections between text that was only possible previously by the human mind. Except that they can do it a lot faster and, when well-trained, with greater precision.

One example is sentiment analysis where the algorithm is not looking for the text itself but more subjective notions of tone expressed in a text. For example, this technique is currently used to analyze customer reviews in order to understand whether a review is positive or negative. I manually attempted this for a Old Testament class assignment in which I mapped out the “sentiment” of Isaiah. I basically categorized each verse with a color to indicate whether it was positive (blessing or worship) or negative (condemnation or lament). I then zoomed out to see how the book’s  sentiment oscillated throughout the chapters. This laborious analysis made me look at the book in a whole different lens. As AI applications become more common, these analysis and visuals could be created in a matter of seconds.

A Future for Biblical Scholarship

Now, by showing these examples I don’t mean to say that AI will replace Scholars. Algorithms still need to be trained by humans who understand the text’s original languages and its intricacies. Yet, I do see a future where Biblical scholarship will not be hampered by the current barriers of entry I described above. Imagine a future where scholars collaborate with data scientists to uncover new meaning in an ancient text. I also see an opportunity for professionals that know enough about Biblical studies and technology becoming valuable additions to research teams. (Are you listening Fuller Seminary? How about a new MA in Biblical Studies and Text Mining?). The hope is that with these tools, more people can be involved in the process and collaboration between researchers can increase. The task of Biblical research is too large to be limited to a select group highly educated scholars. Instead, AI can facilitate the crowdsourcing of the work to analyze and make meaning of the countless text currently available.

With all that said, it is difficult imagine a time where the Bible is just a book to be analyzed. Instead it is to be experienced, wrestled with and discussed. New technologies will not supplant that. Yet, could they open new avenues of meaning until now never conceived by the human mind. What if AI-enabled Biblical Scholarship could not just uncover new knowledge but also facilitate revelation?

Can AI Usher in a New Reformation?

As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation approaches, I want to offer some thoughts on how emerging technologies like AI will revolutionize the face of Christianity. At first, these two seem mostly disconnected yet this could not be further from the truth. AI and other emerging technologies have the potential to disrupt, re-organize, and re-arrange the institutional church for centuries to come. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me frame this question by first examining the role of technology in the Reformation 500 years ago

Simply put: without the printing press, there would not have been a Reformation in the early 1500’s Europe. With it, Luther and other Reformers were able to disseminate their ideas quickly, bringing turmoil and political unrest for most of Europe. This technological innovation sped up the process of disseminating new ideas enough to irreversibly change the course of history. Now individuals could own a physical copy of the Bible and that changed everything. Would the Reformation have succeeded without it? It is possible but it certainly would have taken much longer and have looked very different from what it did. The printing press enabled unprecedented access to knowledge that would lead to challenging the Roman Catholic’s claim of truth and usher in new centers of authority not just for religion but for reality itself. Along with the Enlightenment, they would lead to the scientific and technological revolutions of the centuries that followed.

Internet as the Printing Press of the 21st Century

At first glance, one could say that the Internet could play a similar role in our times. Internet extended exponentially the access to knowledge that the printing press had started. It allowed individuals anywhere in the world to access information in a revolutionary way. The individual did not need to own a physical copy anymore but could access the text electronically in real-time. Furthermore, with the increase in bandwidth and the rise of Internet 2.0, the dissemination of information was no longer bound to text alone but could now come with sound and moving image. With the emergence of social media, the process of information and knowledge sharing further increased exponentially since anyone could create and share content in a global platform.

However, it is important to highlight the limitation of the Internet as it exists today. While information is abundant, knowledge is scarce. The content is 10 miles wide but 5 inches deep. Then there are issues with accuracy, false information and simply a lot of triviality. The Internet is not a place for knowledge sharing only but also a place to entertain or simply express one-self. Content is abundant and being created each day but in a very disorganized and fragmented way. It is basically an amalgamation of crowds, for good or for ill.

AI Will Bring Order to the Internet Chaos

This is precisely why I believe AI can be a game changer that can truly harness the power of the Net towards more purposeful aims. How? AI will take Internet to a new-level of effectiveness by organizing and transmitting knowledge more efficiently. Intelligence is about analyzing data, identifying patterns and making decisions. Currently, content in the Internet is a mixture of some information with a lot of noise surrounding it. AI algorithms that can filter out the noise from the real information would be a welcome enhancement to the Net.

This can manifest itself in many fronts. One of them is in search engines where AI can improve the accuracy of a search by not only knowing the topic but also the context of the user. Furthermore, with improvements in translation, someone’s search can transcend the bounds of the user’s search language to capture content in other languages. It can also improve the ability to find content not just in text but sound and video which now is fairly limited. All of these enhancements would greatly increase the accuracy of searches greatly optimizing the process of research and knowledge sharing.

Another front is in machine-human interfaces. AI will revolutionize the relationship between humans and machines, therefore bringing the Internet much closer to our bodies. I have covered this extensively in my blogs about cyborgization. For here, I just want to highlight the fact that AI will move the Net closer to our brain. The culmination of this process is what some have called the Hive Mind. Basically, when our minds are connected to the Internet and can work as one collective consciousness. This is similar to swarms of insects that act in one direction with surprising coordination and purpose. Needless to say, this trend has seismic implications not just to the diffusion of knowledge but even how we experience reality itself.

Some of this is years if not decades down the road. Yet, even the process to move towards intelligent content and a collective consciousness is fairly disruptive on its own to upend governments, businesses and, yes, the church as well.

Glimpses of a New Reformation

How will this AI-enabled Internet facilitate a new reformation in the church? Before answering this question, we must recognize that unlike the 1500’s the Christian church is no longer the center of power and knowledge of Western societies. However, it is yet still a remarkable global hub of influence, especially in the developing world. In a world where political, technological and economic change fragments the legitimacy of all centers of power, the search of meaning becomes all the more salient. Many have found it in the ancient path of the Christian faith a contemporary way to make sense of their world (including the writer of this blog). I say this to qualify that any reformation in the church will have very different consequences than the one 500 years ago by the simple fact that now Christianity is just one of the many centers of influence on any given society. Hence, its effects will be more subtle and more spread out than the original Reformation.

With that said, the Internet is already disrupting the church. Computer Scientist and Researcher Allan Downey, believes the Internet is one of the driving factors in the decline of Christianity in the West.  Would an AI-enabled Internet mean the end of the church? I don’t believe so. Yet, it would be naive to think that the church would survive this time without any major changes. The main question is what will the church look like in this new era of turbo-charged, AI-enabled disruption of how we create and share knowledge?

It is very difficult to anticipate all the changes that may come in this scenario. One thing is certain, for Christianity to prosper in this future it must learn to integrate advances of science and technology while also holding on to the century-old traditions of worship, prayer, Scripture reading, proclamation and service. Adapting to change while staying true to its values is the challenge for any institution trying to navigate the coming changes. This is especially true for an institution like the church that has notoriously resisted and combated change in the last centuries. It is time to replace old-wineskins with new ones if we are to receive new wine.

My prayer is that in an age of exponential knowledge creation and sharing, the diverging paths between the Reformation and the Enlightenment will come together in a view of the world that is unafraid of discovery but also filled with divine wonder. For the last two centuries, these currents have diverged and opposed each other. Now it is time to reconcile them. I am not sure exactly what that would look like, but I hope to see a glimpse of it in my lifetime.