Official: You Can Now Get Early Access to the Next Version of Logos
Comments
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I don't quite understand this - could you expand a bit please?
AI within a chatbot produces at the moment, trying to put together "sensible" statements according to what it was programmed with. The tagging of Logos resources was maybe done with some algorithms but often by hand. Whenever you search Logos now, it doesn't produce something new; it reacts precisely to your input (search operators, etc.) and lets you access your books in an incredible way. But if you let AI produce some text, this text will be different every single time (hence its incomparability to the tagging and dataset approach so far). Searching Logos now relies on the intelligence of highly skilled people who created the datasets (e.g. in the original language resources) and tagged titles (which can be accessed via the Factbook). You can apply your theological knowledge to the vast intertwining of all your resources.
However, for AI to perform a proper run, we would only need "reader editions," not "logos editions," to get results. The quality is not the same; it is far worse because AI does not correct itself and you can never repeat the same outcome. Also, AI sometimes makes the most stupid mistakes while at the same time being able to solve highly complex problems. It is not reliable. However, the tagging and datasets are quite reliable.
Jonas - YES! Thank you for your well-stated and accurate remarks ... I was about to post to make this point, as well as reinforce your posts at 3:31 & 3:39 today.
There is a HUGE VALUE in the tagging, since it (I presume) it was done by believers, at least most of the time in fellowship with the indwelling HS, and with a solid understanding of the Bible. That is, Spirit-Directed Human Intelligence. Hurray for SDHI !!
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
I know the other subscription tiers haven't been announced/determined, but I hope there is one aimed at people with academic interests. I would have little use for many of the new Pro features, but I might be interested in an AI tool optimized to do textual criticism or Greco Roman or Akkadian intertextuality and stuff like that.
There will be a tier focused more on academic use. I confess that Akkadian intertextuality isn't yet at the top of our list of possible features for that tier, though...
How will the subscription model work with the Academic Program and Academic Pricing? More than just tiers targeted at academic interests, which could include non-students/non-faculty, will there be pricing for academic users in the future?
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East TN:
My apologies for unintentionally "targeting" you. I was "ranting" about the topic in general, and just clicked the nearest Reply. My points were being made to inform folks and to hopefully shut down further comparisons.
No need to apologize! Your comments were on point. I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't inadvertently left the impression that I was opposing a one-time purchase option.
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Major improvements will certainly be delivered to subscribers only.
With the certainty that all new major improvements/features will be accessible to "subscribers only," it seems their decision has unfortunately been made.
My apologies. I expressed myself poorly there. What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
Mark
There seems to be confusion on the point as to whether the company may still consider new features for non subscribers.
Please clarify this for us.
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Will the engine update be at the same time for everyone or, as now for those not upgrading, about 6 months later for those not subscribing?
It will be at the same time for everyone. Many improvements will be restricted to those who upgrade though.
The current feature sets are slightly different for Verbum compared with Logos. Is this going to continue? If so, will there be dynamic pricing (as now) for someone subscribing to both feature sets?
It's very likely there will be some differences between the two feature sets. We haven't yet discussed whether there will be a combined option.
The subscription for Logos Pro includes, presumably classed as features, several books that are currently available to purchase as books (e.g., Lexham Geographic Commentaries). Will these still be available separately?
Yes, they'll be available separately. We don't intend to withdraw books from individual sale just because they're also in a subscription.
When the new model rolls out, will there be discounts applied for those who have already purchased most of the features included in 'Logos 11'?
Yes, discounts will continue.
The discounted price we're currently offering is not an early bird discount. It's a discount based on L10 ownership. There will continue to be a significant discount for L10 owners even after launch.
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And guess what ... the more that the AI tools infect the Logos experience, the LESS VALUE tagging and datasets will have. The AI doesn't understand the incredibly poweful syntax and keywords that are inherent in Logos searching. And it would be hugely, impractically expensive for Logos to reprogram ChatGPT to recognize those capabilities.
If I'm wrong in my logic, please explain why, and explain how subscriptions will change any of it.
Mark explained how smart search works earlier. First, they take your search and make it broader (looking for synonyms) and use traditional tagging to find the top 50 results. Then AI orders those results and figures out which portions to highlight as a match with your search. Beyond that, there is no reason that the tagging should not be visible to an AI. It can easily be trained to convert a search for Abraham to look for "Abram," "Abraham," and person:Abraham.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Good question about Academic program/pricing with the subscription model. If the subscription model is what Logos is going to go with (still trying to process all that is written here), they can pay back all the thousands of dollars I paid and go their way.
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However, at least in current forms, and likely in all future forms, SINCE the tagging is hidden, not part of the exposed readable text, the AI engine is oblivious to it. The AI searches don't need nor can they use it. The AI is trained on the world-wide-web ... why should it need tagging? (sarcasm intended ... like in Back to the Future ... where we're going, we don't NEED "roads").
You are making several assumptions here that we have no evidence of. We do not know what the access of the AI component to the tagging is, The AI component of search is not trained on the world-wide-web. Logos is not using one of the glitzy chat bots for its prioritization of results. I suspect that much of the tagging was done initially by AI or a NLP predecessor. Should Logos expand its AI in the search into the core search engine itself, I would expect it to still continue to be tied to tagging - physical or on the fly.
And it would be hugely, impractically expensive for Logos to reprogram ChatGPT to recognize those capabilities.
It is a matter of retraining rather than reprogramming. Should Logos ever choose to partner with ChatGPT or a similar product, I would expect significant retraining to match the corpus that it is intended to "know."
that as the AI grows, Logos will do significantly less tagging, on significantly fewer books ... since that's probably a big portion of their historical business expenses.
I assume the reverse. As AI becomes more adept at accurate tagging (I'm assuming somewhere 92-96% now) and there is less human cleanup of the data after the initial computerized process, I would expect more tagging and more complex tagging than we currently have.
MJ: I have participated in the R&D plus testing of another ChatGPT-driven Bible Study tool, so I do have some experience with the process, in addition to having been an active programmer since 1967. I've also been very extensively involved with R&D plus use of serious genetic algorithm (GA) and neural-net (NN) tools for high-end stock trading algorithms. So, none of this is new turf for me.
I can't speak to what's going on behind the curtain at Logos re AI, but I'm 95% sure that the things I spoke of are correct and will remain so for the foreseeable future. FYI, they have NOT trained ChatGPT on their huge library ... partly due to the expense, and partly since even those couple hundred thousand books would just be a drop in the bucket statistically, vs the zillions of MB of web-scraped content that makes ChatGPT & other robust AI engines function. Furthermore, I *am* certain that the tagging is hidden from the current Logos AI implementation, based on simple tests I've already done. And, even if it wasn't, those tags if made visible to ChatGPT are just "noise" ... meaningless gobbledegook that would not statistically correlate with other items in ChatGPT's huge dictionary of genes and neurons, nor would they contribute to the rules that it generates.
Also, I'm drawing some information from an email that Mark Barnes sent to me on March 11th ... it wasn't labelled as confidential, so I'll paste it here in its entirety (bold & underlines are mine):
Hi Jim,
Very few companies have the financial ability for an entirely homegrown AI engine, so we’re building on technology provided by several partners. We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks. We monitor the effectiveness of these models and have the ability to quickly switch to better-performing or more reliable models if we discover frequent bias or other adverse issues.
No AI tool presently in existence could *only* be trained using Logos’ library. We have more than 200,000 books, but training an AI from scratch would likely need tens or hundreds of millions of books.
In a document I’m writing, I say that AI has human qualities, not divine ones: AI, and especially the large language models that power tools such as ChatGPT, are typically trained on billions of documents written by human beings. That’s how it’s able to mimic human responses. But that also means AI mirrors and sometimes amplifies the weaknesses found in all human authors. Like us, AI has limitations, fallibilities, and biases. Human beings are both fallen and made in the image of God. AI is neither of those things, but it reflects both of them because it is trained on us. Just as human-authored books can both help and hinder our study of God’s word, so too can AI.
We mitigate against those risks by using AI to illuminate the highest-quality biblical texts, datasets, and books. We don’t just use AI standalone, we use it with our own content. That content, and careful direction from us, guides the AI to product output that is very likely to be useful for biblical studies. It’s still imperfect, and needs to be used with discernment, but it’s generally higher quality and more accurate than you might expect.
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Mark Barnes
Product Manager, Bible Study Tools
Logos
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
Major improvements will certainly be delivered to subscribers only.
With the certainty that all new major improvements/features will be accessible to "subscribers only," it seems their decision has unfortunately been made.
My apologies. I expressed myself poorly there. What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
Mark
There seems to be confusion on the point as to whether the company may still consider new features for non subscribers.
Please clarify this for us.
I apologize for adding to that confusion. It's hard to keep up with this thread, and I didn't proofread my response carefully enough before I hit Post.
Yes, Logos is still considering new features for non-subscribers. That is not ruled out. That has been the situation since my first post where I asked for feedback on whether that would be important to you.
It's not surprising to hear many of you say that the ability to buy a feature set is important. We knew it would be important to some of you. What we wanted to understand was how important it was and how many of you felt that way.
This thread has been great for us in that regard. We hear, loud and clear, that – alongside our plans for subscription – many of you would value the option to purchase a feature set, even if it didn't come with regular updates or AI features. We're continuing to listen, and continue to value this feedback.
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It's far easier for me to make an investment now for something that I can continue to use in the future than it is for me to commit to an ongoing subscription fee that I may not be able to maintain through my retirement.
I'm not sure I'm understanding you. You'll still be able to upgrade to the latest version of Logos after retirement (for free), without paying a subscription fee.
Then let me try to express the core concern here in a different way. If Logos moves to this new model in October, what will my options be in December? Will I be able to purchase a new feature in December and carry it over into retirement? I would like for the answer to be "yes." The most recent post from Mark Barnes suggests that may be the case.
Major improvements will certainly be delivered to subscribers only.
With the certainty that all new major improvements/features will be accessible to "subscribers only," it seems their decision has unfortunately been made.
My apologies. I expressed myself poorly there. What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
If the answer is "no," then I would most likely forgo the new feature, because I'm not interested in picking up ongoing monthly fees as I approach retirement.
I believe most of the angst in this thread is because earlier posts from FaithLife staff seemed to imply that the answer would be "no." But I'm entirely comfortable with the arrangement Mark describes here:
...What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
I don't expect to get new features for free.
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I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
This is starting to sound much more hopeful. Now if only the language could be clarified and solidified, all the drama would die down quite quickly.
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Mark Barnes (Logos) wrote the following post at Today 2:29 PM:
Major improvements will certainly be delivered to subscribers only.
With the certainty that all new major improvements/features will be accessible to "subscribers only," it seems their decision has unfortunately been made.
My apologies. I expressed myself poorly there. What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
Mark
There seems to be confusion on the point as to whether the company may still consider new features for non subscribers.
Please clarify this for us.
I apologize for adding to that confusion. It's hard to keep up with this thread, and I didn't proofread my response carefully enough before I hit Post.
Yes, Logos is still considering new features for non-subscribers. That is not ruled out. That has been the situation since my first post where I asked for feedback on whether that would be important to you.
It's not surprising to hear many of you say that the ability to buy a feature set is important. We knew it would be important to some of you. What we wanted to understand was how important it was and how many of you felt that way.
This thread has been great for us in that regard. We hear, loud and clear, that – alongside our plans for subscription – many of you would value the option to purchase a feature set, even if it didn't come with regular updates or AI features. We're continuing to listen, and continue to value this feedback.
QuoteMark, Thanks for the quick reply on this0 -
And guess what ... the more that the AI tools infect the Logos experience, the LESS VALUE tagging and datasets will have. The AI doesn't understand the incredibly poweful syntax and keywords that are inherent in Logos searching. And it would be hugely, impractically expensive for Logos to reprogram ChatGPT to recognize those capabilities.
If I'm wrong in my logic, please explain why, and explain how subscriptions will change any of it.
Mark explained how smart search works earlier. First, they take your search and make it broader (looking for synonyms) and use traditional tagging to find the top 50 results. Then AI orders those results and figures out which portions to highlight as a match with your search. Beyond that, there is no reason that the tagging should not be visible to an AI. It can easily be trained to convert a search for Abraham to look for "Abram," "Abraham," and person:Abraham.
Hi, Justin
I did pay the 9.99 to try out the the AI, after watching how it works from the examples that Josh Rowe helpfully posted in MP Seminars.
I tested the Search using carefully worded queries, to determine how well implemented it had been (thus far). It worked fine with simple queries ... I got many legit hits to the question "How old was Noah when the Flood came?". And I got many legit hits to the question: "How do young-earth creationists discuss the Flood?". HOWEVER, when I worded the question with an implicit "filter" ... this is a BASIC capability of a robust AI ... the Logos AI implementation utterly failed. If you're currently subscribing, try out these two AI queries:
"How old was Noah when the Flood came, according to young-earth creationists?"
"According to young-earth creationists, how old was Noah when the Flood came?"
If your library is at all similar to mine, you'll get a zillion hits to each question. However, NONE of the hits will take BOTH PARTS of the question into account.
Most of what I got, from both questions, was about YEC's ... since there is so much written about that POV, in my library.
A robust AI would have handled that two-part Q without dropping a beat ... I have posed far more complex questions to another Bible-lesson-prep ChatGPT4-driven app, and it's handled them just fine ... albeit with sometimes goofy or contradictory answers ... it's clear that it read and worked with the entire question.
I *did* like the summaries for the various articles ... but it was awkward to skim them since I had to click on each, and I got dozens or hundreds of hits to most questions. It would have been far better if the summaries were already gen'd in a second column ... but Logos doesn't (and, I'm sure won't) do that since every summary costs cloud CPU cycles.
The illustrations for the Sermon engine were a total disappointment. In my 14k+ titles, I have plenty of "sermon illustration" books. Logos COULD have designed that part of the AI to at least attempt to draw illustrations FROM those books. Instead, it made up simplistic stories much like you might tell a young child at bedtime.
So, after testing that and other things, I cancelled the subscription. Logos was nice and refunded my $9.99, btw.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
My apologies. I expressed myself poorly there. What I was trying to say was that if we released a new feature, any improvements to that feature would be delivered to subscribers but would not be delivered to people who had bought the feature outright. I wasn't ruling out the possibility that in two years' time there might be a means to purchase those improvements outright.
....
I apologize for adding to that confusion. It's hard to keep up with this thread, and I didn't proofread my response carefully enough before I hit Post.
Yes, Logos is still considering new features for non-subscribers. That is not ruled out. That has been the situation since my first post where I asked for feedback on whether that would be important to you.
It's not surprising to hear many of you say that the ability to buy a feature set is important. We knew it would be important to some of you. What we wanted to understand was how important it was and how many of you felt that way.
This thread has been great for us in that regard. We hear, loud and clear, that – alongside our plans for subscription – many of you would value the option to purchase a feature set, even if it didn't come with regular updates or AI features. We're continuing to listen, and continue to value this feedback.
Mark -
THANK YOU for qualifying the earlier exclusionary statement, which truly has, as another poster put it, "caused many of us a lot of angst". Understatement, that.
However, your phrasing still makes it clear that you ARE SURE you are going to start offering subscriptions of varying types, but the wording above "is still considering" means you ARE NOT YET SURE whether you will offer periodic "baskets" of accumulated non-AI features (along with necessary datasets) to be purchased on a "perpetual license" basis, as has been true for all prior history.
Please, if ... WHEN (I hope) ... y'all DO become SURE about offering those accumulated-feature+dataset packages every year or two, PLEASE let us know here in this thread, and please MODIFY your original post so that newcomers to the thread won't have to wade through everything to find it.
And I do join with others most sincerely in thanking God for leading you to open this up to feedback ... and thanking you for following that leading.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
I'd like to add my voice to any encouragement to continue to bundle feature set upgrades as one-time purchases. I'm not very interested in the features that cost you additional compute on the server side (LLM integrations, etc.) and don't mind paying for the cost of new feature development but don't want to lose those features once I've paid for them.
It seems you already have ways to do "feature upgrades" with each new version of Logos, and I would hope for a bi/tri annual cycle of bundling new software features for those of us who do usually buy feature upgrades and/or new base packages with each cycle.
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If you're currently subscribing, try out these two AI queries:
"How old was Jonah when the Flood came, according to young-earth creationists?"
"According to young-earth creationists, how old was Jonah when the Flood came?"
If your library is at all similar to mine, you'll get a zillion hits to each question. However, NONE of the hits will take BOTH PARTS of the question into account.
Your tests were more appropriate for a chat-bot than for an ai prioritization of a search. And I would question whether or not Jonah was alive at the time of the flood. So my comparison of capabilities is:
I would not expect the search, AI assisted or not, to be able to correctly identify young earthers accurately.
Gemini did a decent job of not answering the question:
According to young-earth creationists (YECs), the concept of Noah's Flood and the story of Jonah typically aren't directly linked in terms of chronology. Here's why:
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Separate Events: YECs believe the Flood was a singular, catastrophic global event that happened thousands of years ago. The book of Jonah tells a story of a prophet likely living much later.
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Timescale: YECs estimate the Earth and all lifeforms to be around 6,000-10,000 years old. This timeframe is separate from the timeframe they propose for the Flood.
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Focus on Jonah's Story: For YECs, the book of Jonah centers on his message of repentance and God's mercy, not necessarily his age during a specific point in history.
Therefore, young-earth creationists wouldn't necessarily assign a specific age to Jonah in relation to the Flood. They would focus on understanding the message of his book within its own context.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Hi MJ
WOOPS ... my foolish mistake while typing fast. The queries I used definitely referenced NOAH, not Jonah. You're quite correct that Jonah was not alive at the time of the Flood!
As to the form of my question ... the Logos AI is BUILT ON various "chat" engines (see Mark Barnes' letter to me, that I posted). The queries that I raised which used the term "young-earth creationists" resulted in dozens or hundreds of hits ... I didn't count. There were a LOT. And they were for the most part, valid hits.
Try it yourself. But with Noah, not Jonah.
Your examples were reasonable for structural syntactical searching, which is what Logos currently offers, in its own format. AI engines do NOT require formalized syntax ... accurate grammar and spelling helps, but even that is not crucial.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
I'm familiar with your search for Noah, I started the other thread about it. I think MJ did a good job of explaining that what you're looking for is not what Logos is trying to do. They're making a smart search, not a chatbot. Since no resource in your library is going to distinguish between the age of Noah from a YEC perspective versus other viewpoints, there isn't anything for it to surface.
In my book, that is a feature, not a bug. I don't want Logos generating an answer by combining different resources, where I have to guess where it came from. That is how other AIs make stuff up. I don't want answers that aren't explicitly in my library. But your mileage may vary.
If you run a search where the qualifier is relevant, you will get better results. Example: who is the Antichrist according to preterists?
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
If you are asking for feedback, please know that I am unlikely to rent or subscribe to feature sets as one of your customers. I have no problem with you offering a subscription model for your customer base. I am sure some customers are pleased with that option. I have no qualms there. However, I am personally unlikely to go down this road. Therefore, eliminating the purchase option will likely have the effect of me spending less money on the software and books. I write this to simply appeal to you. Please keep the purchase option alive in tandem with the subscription option as you have done for so many years.
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I'm familiar with your search for Noah, I started the other thread about it. I think MJ did a good job of explaining that what you're looking for is not what Logos is trying to do. They're making a smart search, not a chatbot. Since no resource in your library is going to distinguish between the age of Noah from a YEC perspective versus other viewpoints, there isn't anything for it to surface.
In my book, that is a feature, not a bug. I don't want Logos generating an answer by combining different resources, where I have to guess where it came from. That is how other AIs make stuff up. I don't want answers that aren't explicitly in my library. But your mileage may vary.
If you run a search where the qualifier is relevant, you will get better results. Example: who is the Antichrist according to preterists?
Thanks for that early thread, Justin. Yours plus Josh's comments convinced me to spend the money and try it out.
I hear you re the value of using qualifiers that are keywords in Logos datasets ... I doubt that the Logos AI implementation actually USES those datasets at present, however (I explained why, earlier). It would be a very complicated and expensive undertaking.
The FACT is that Logos DID recognize "young-earth creationists" ... it found a lot of info about those teachings, and the debates with old-earth creationists, and evolutionists (I have a lot of titles in my library about this topic ... it's a favorite of mine, me being a science geek.)
So, until and unless Logos staff explicitly state that the keyword lists, tagging and dataset info is fully accessible to the AI Search engine, as someone who's done a lot of coding and testing of this kind of stuff before, I'd advise everyone to assume that info is NOT utilized, at least at present. I would be *happy* ... overjoyed, in fact ... if someone in charge of the Logos AI coding were to correct me on this.
In fact, IF those keywords, tags and datasets ARE fully intertwined with the Logos AI Search tools, I'd have a much higher opinion of their value.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
Hi Jim
If you run a search where the qualifier is relevant, you will get better results. Example: who is the Antichrist according to preterists?
Thanks for that early thread, Justin. Yours plus Josh's comments convinced me to spend the money and try it out.
I hear you re the value of using qualifiers that are keywords in Logos datasets ... I doubt that the Logos AI implementation actually USES those datasets at present, however (I explained why, earlier). It would be a very complicated and expensive undertaking.
I didn’t take Justin’s comment to suggest that the smart search is making use of keywords in Logos datasets - more that he was suggesting a different simple-text qualifier.
Am I missing something?
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In fact, IF those keywords, tags and datasets ARE fully intertwined with the Logos AI Search tools, I'd have a much higher opinion of their value.
I'm still waiting for the AI to understand that "Nicea" and "Nicaea" are the same place.
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Hi Jim
If you run a search where the qualifier is relevant, you will get better results. Example: who is the Antichrist according to preterists?
Thanks for that early thread, Justin. Yours plus Josh's comments convinced me to spend the money and try it out.
I hear you re the value of using qualifiers that are keywords in Logos datasets ... I doubt that the Logos AI implementation actually USES those datasets at present, however (I explained why, earlier). It would be a very complicated and expensive undertaking.
I didn’t take Justin’s comment to suggest that the smart search is making use of keywords in Logos datasets - more that he was suggesting a different simple-text qualifier.
Am I missing something?
Good point. I assumed that since "preterist" is almost certainly one of the keywords and/or tags, so I may have incorrectly assumed he was using it for that reason. My response was intended to point out that:
1. it DID recognize a less-likely-to-be-tagged term "young-earth-creationists" (in fact its a phrase ... more difficult)
2. there was nothing wrong with the syntax of my query ... AI queries are DESIGNED to be natural language ... they've been trained on the world of the web, after all. If however I had tried to use the exact syntax that a Logos query might require, I suspect it would have confused the AI search. Especially if I got into fancier queries that referenced datasets or morphology, etc.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
the Logos AI is BUILT ON various "chat" engines
Smart Search doesn't use ChatGPT or Gemini.
In Smart Search, we perform a very loose search without AI. That finds 50 articles that roughly match your query. We then use AI to identify a snippet from each article that most closely matches your query. We don't rewrite any text; we only identify the most relevant existing text in the book. Once we have these snippets, we use AI to re-order them to put the most relevant ones at the top.
I think we have different readings of "built on" ...
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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1. it DID recognize a less-likely-to-be-tagged term "young-earth-creationists" (in fact its a phrase ... more difficult)
There is a huge difference between recognizing the phrase, recognizing a tag for that phrase, and recognizing the people to whom the phrase applies implicitly or explicitly. You need to show me that the Logos search identified people who are considered young earth creationists in resources not tagged with topics and where the person is not referred to as a young earth creationist for me to buy into your argument.
AI queries are DESIGNED to be natural language
True for the chat bot, less true (but still true) of the Logos AI-enhanced search, not true at all for some uses of AI
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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the Logos AI is BUILT ON various "chat" engines
Smart Search doesn't use ChatGPT or Gemini.
In Smart Search, we perform a very loose search without AI. That finds 50 articles that roughly match your query. We then use AI to identify a snippet from each article that most closely matches your query. We don't rewrite any text; we only identify the most relevant existing text in the book. Once we have these snippets, we use AI to re-order them to put the most relevant ones at the top.
I think we have different readings of "built on" ...
Hi MJ:
I didn't recall seeing that quote you provided from Mark Barnes. I'm using Mark's term, from the email he sent me, when he said:
"we’re building on technology provided by several partners. We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks."
I've been using the term ChatGPT as a simplistic way to talk about AI interface. Actually, ChatGPT is just a front end. Logos obviously is utilizing a deeper level API. He didn't tell me who those partners were.
I also missed the two-part search interpretation "hint" that you quoted. If that's how it's working, it's going to be hard to learn how to use. If the Logos AI first-pass REQUIRES some rough syntax rules, then presumably it rejects some other syntax. That's less powerful than other interfaces I've seen before.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
The disadvantage of the AL feature is that the verses are not hovorable. It would be very handy if this were implemented.
Blessings in Christ.
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Let’s imagine that Logos staff finally decide to clean up all the awkwardnesses and documented limitations of the notes+highlighting feature(s).
Let’s imagine that a lot of users have previously created hundred of thousands of notes that use various features of the existing Notes+Highlighting. Finally, let’s imagine that your cleanup of Notes+Highlighting is so extensive that you need to replace a major portion of the existing code, and that the 2.0 version can do the same things as before, plus a lot more things, as well as fixing bugs.
You’ve said major new features will only be by subscription. I presume a wholesale rewrite to a 2.0 version (my example) would be in that subscription-only category.The Logos NOTES feature, as well as the highlighters, are really bad. Even though I created my own highlighters, it's still bad because I'm limited by the tool as it was built and it has a lot of inconsistencies, almost a kind of "bug".
I still dream that Logos will implement the markdown language and a note system inspired by the Obsidian software. Only then will I start using the Logos grading system. Today I only use it to mark and save errors I find in books. Nothing more.____________
"... And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (Ne 8.10)
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the Logos AI is BUILT ON various "chat" engines (see Mark Barnes' letter to me, that I posted)
He didn't say that. You quoted him as writing:
so we’re building on technology provided by several partners. We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks.
This quote is accurate.
FWIW, Smart Search is currently built with word embedding vector and vector-space techniques, not by using a RLHF LLM. This may change in the future as technologies advance and different approaches deliver better results.
I've been using the term ChatGPT as a simplistic way to talk about AI interface.
This feels unhelpfully simplistic to me (if you want to talk about technical details).
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the Logos AI is BUILT ON various "chat" engines (see Mark Barnes' letter to me, that I posted)
He didn't say that. You quoted him as writing:
so we’re building on technology provided by several partners. We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks.
This quote is accurate.
FWIW, Smart Search is currently built with word embedding vector and vector-space techniques, not by using a RLHF LLM. This may change in the future as technologies advance and different approaches deliver better results.
I've been using the term ChatGPT as a simplistic way to talk about AI interface.
This feels unhelpfully simplistic to me (if you want to talk about technical details).
Hey Bradley ... I'm surprised you contradicted my use of Mark's term. Here, again, is the full letter. Note the bold underline that I added, re "built on".
I'm going to try to stop responding to quibbles about just how Logos AI (or any other AI) works ... although I've had the opportunity to do a lot of related development coding, I don't know Logos' code.
I've been trying to share insights but it appears to be creating arguments that don't really impact the opinion I am sharing, which I am of course entitled to.
So, sayonara, folks!
Hi Jim,
Very few companies have the financial ability for an entirely homegrown AI engine, so we’re building on technology provided by several partners. We use a variety of large language models and other AI tools and choose each one based on its suitability for specific tasks. We monitor the effectiveness of these models and have the ability to quickly switch to better-performing or more reliable models if we discover frequent bias or other adverse issues.
No AI tool presently in existence could *only* be trained using Logos’ library. We have more than 200,000 books, but training an AI from scratch would likely need tens or hundreds of millions of books.
In a document I’m writing, I say that AI has human qualities, not divine ones: AI, and especially the large language models that power tools such as ChatGPT, are typically trained on billions of documents written by human beings. That’s how it’s able to mimic human responses. But that also means AI mirrors and sometimes amplifies the weaknesses found in all human authors. Like us, AI has limitations, fallibilities, and biases. Human beings are both fallen and made in the image of God. AI is neither of those things, but it reflects both of them because it is trained on us. Just as human-authored books can both help and hinder our study of God’s word, so too can AI.
We mitigate against those risks by using AI to illuminate the highest-quality biblical texts, datasets, and books. We don’t just use AI standalone, we use it with our own content. That content, and careful direction from us, guides the AI to product output that is very likely to be useful for biblical studies. It’s still imperfect, and needs to be used with discernment, but it’s generally higher quality and more accurate than you might expect.
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Mark Barnes
Product Manager, Bible Study Tools
Logos
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0
