New feature: Sermon Assistant
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MJ. Smith said:
[Perplexity] They (AI) are best used as assistive tools to aid human analysis rather than as standalone arbiters of theological consistency or validity.
If we recognise the limitations of AI it then becomes a great tool. If we don't, then we will make many mistakes and blame AI for all of them.
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Sorry for misunderstanding your concern.
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That’s what I keep saying from the inception. The way I do it is with different questions and different scenarios, scripture is important too, so is a printer
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Yes, my thots were also running in this direction. If this were made possible it could/would also solve the previous question of BIAS, as we would filter in or out resources from the Library accordingly. Or am I also missing something?
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Brilliant reply, which also sums up where/to what extent we use AI & where we rely on individual contemplation, prayer & human debate/exchange.
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Riekus de Poel said:
If this were made possible it could/would also solve the previous question of BIAS, as we would filter in or out resources from the Library accordingly.
Seems to me this pushes the fallacy of confirmational bias as well as building in all the same biases you used to build your library. Appropriate for indoctrination i.e. discipline and sacramental preparation, inappropriate for study whether for personal growth or academic. Note I treat bias as a descriptive term not an evaluative one unless explicitly may so by 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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I am a Lutheran pastor; I study for discipline and sacramenetal preparation. I am not occupying the "ivory tower," and I have determined that my personal growth takes place better in a Confessional Evangelical context than a Reformed, Roman, Radical, Anabaptist, or Enthusiast context. The congretgations whom I serve as pastor expect me to preach as a Lutheran, not as a unionist, a Crypto-Calvinist, or an enthusiast.
So I want AI, if I use it, to give me information that is consistent with my Confessional position, not information that disagrees with it, unless I am using that information to explain why we do not support such positions.
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So I want AI, if I use it, to give me information that is consistent with my Confessional position, not information that disagrees with it, unless I am using that information to explain why we do not support such positions.
I agree completely although from the perspective of a Catholic leaning East. My point is that I WANT the information to be biased in this context. I don't want to buy into the belief this is asking for "unbiased" results.
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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I'm leaning more towards "free grace", "provisionist" and not Calvinist, Arminian, Catholic, Campbellite, or Ruckmanite.
I asked for passages refuting any of the positions, and it refuses. But, when I ask what a passage means, if it can be misinterpreted to be calvinist, it gives me a calvinist perspective.
The AI only manages to find calvinist, determinist, decreeist answers unless it is the kind of question that compares two perspectives on a passage. Then, it might give calvinist and arminian views, but never free grace or provisionist." what does romans 8.28 mean "
The above question brings back a synopsis based on three calvinist authored books.
I don't think it means to be calvinist, but it's primary library seems to be calvinist.
I am also noticing that out of my 8000+ resources, I rarely find an answer in any of the books I own. I am wondering if this is a promotion tool to sell more books by Logos...The Calvinist, "Got Questions" book, which I own, seems to be the most popular book I own that the AI references.
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Buck McDaniel said:
I am also noticing that out of my 8000+ resources, I rarely find an answer in any of the books I own. I am wondering if this is a promotion tool to sell more books by Logos...
This thread is discussing Sermon Assistant, not Smart Search, and I don't want to derail the thread. But I'll respond quickly, and perhaps you can create a new thread if you want to take the discussion further.
If you want to restrict the search to books you own, use the Books Search, rather than All Search. A lot of users haven't realized that's an option, so we'll be making that clearer in a future version.
Buck McDaniel said:The Calvinist, "Got Questions" book, which I own, seems to be the most popular book I own that the AI references.
Got Questions is a website that has spent years optimizing to rank highly in Google searches. As a result, it often ranks highly in Smart Search, too. This shows their team has done great work with their SEO, but it does give the book a higher prominence than some users would like. We've already applied some simple improvements, but ranking algorithms are notoriously difficult to tune. If you're desperate, you can hide the book, and then it won't show up at all.
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Thank you, Mark. On the flipside, please don’t push this book too far down as I’m sure there are plenty of users who like getting the quick bitesize answers it provides. Would prioritizing it make it show more of your fix starts hiding it?
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Mark Barnes (Logos) said:
Got Questions is a website that has spent years optimizing to rank highly in Google searches. As a result, it often ranks highly in Smart Search, too. This shows their team has done great work with their SEO, but it does give the book a higher prominence than some users would like. We've already applied some simple improvements, but ranking algorithms are notoriously difficult to tune. If you're desperate, you can hide the book, and then it won't show up at all.
I hope you can achieve a good middle ground for this resource; I like it a lot but do also understand that others may not appreciate its prominence in the search results.
Mattillo said:Would prioritizing it make it show more of your fix starts hiding it?
Aside from whether prioritizing has any impact on the smart search, can we prioritize monographs?
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In order to keep the AI from using the book "Got Answers", I would have to hide the book from the Logos Library on the Logos computers. I don't think the powers that be there will allow that. When I do an AI search, it does not consider any resources on my computer or in my account. It searches the resources at logos.com. Even if I never owned a particular resource, the AI shows the link to the resource. If it is not on my computer, it shows the price to buy it and the standard sample pages from the book that you get from the sales page.
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Buck McDaniel said:
When I do an AI search, it does not consider any resources on my computer or in my account. It searches the resources at logos.com. Even if I never owned a particular resource, the AI shows the link to the resource. If it is not on my computer, it shows the price to buy it and the standard sample pages from the book that you get from the sales page.
Are you referring to how it is used in the Sermon Assistant or specifically using an AI-assisted search - the All search?
If the latter then, if you switch to a Books search and selects the Smart search option, then Logos will only search books that you own.
It has been requested that this option be incorporated into the All search but I don't know if that will be done.
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Honestly, I find the alliteration of the generated Sermon Outline titles highly annoying. Too often they are a distraction from the message rather than adding real value.
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Hi Lee - and welcome to the forums
Lee Corpier said:Honestly, I find the alliteration of the generated Sermon Outline titles highly annoying
I hadn't remembered that the outlines generated were alliterated - so just ran a test generating an outline for John 1:1-14. This gave me these headings:
I'd be interested to know what you are doing to get the alliterated titles. Could you describe the steps you are taking and post some screenshots showing the results (please use the paperclip icon in the forum editor)?
Graham
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It seems like a useful AI tool would be for Logos to summarize the text of my sermon. That would let me see if the points I want to make are clear enough (at least for a robot to pick them out.)
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I have a use case, but i'm unsure if it is in the scope of what this Ai is seeking to accomplish. OR potentially i am doing it incorrectly. Below is my input, but i got an error message. I work with muslims abroad, and have the privledge of being able to faciliate very open conversation groups and studies about all areas of faith. From Sacrifice to Prayer. I would love for this system to be able to aid me in producing pertinent questions and applications for these groups and our classes. Is this possible, or would i need to structure it like a sermon to recieve a helpful output?
Interfaith-Dialogue: Love FeastWe are meeting as a cultural center with our students. Our students are muslim and we share Jesus with them in class, in life, but also very specifically in Interfaith harmony nights.Tonight we are having a love feast/Agape feast. We want to fellowship. But also have a facilitated time of questions in small groups.The topic is about worth & value. Human worth. Individual worth & identity. Innate from God, and for others. We want them to feel loved and valued and discuss essentially that.One reason we want to do this, is due to the war in Gaza. Most of or students are palestinian, so the have been affected a great deal.0 -
Apps McNorton said:
I would love for this system to be able to aid me in producing pertinent questions and applications for these groups and our classes. Is this possible, or would i need to structure it like a sermon to recieve a helpful output?
I have been copying chapters of books and pasting them into Sermon Builder which has a feature that looks at sermons and generate questions based on the text. So I pasted your text in there just now and it generated the following question. So if you created a more comprehensive block of text you could certainly get what might be useful questions generated that.
What is the primary purpose of the Interfaith harmony nights mentioned in the sermon?
How does the speaker intend to facilitate discussions about worth and value during the love feast?
What theological beliefs underpin the idea of human worth and identity as discussed in this sermon?
In what practical ways can we demonstrate love and value to others in our daily lives?
How can understanding our innate worth from God influence our interactions with others, particularly in an interfaith context?
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That’s very helpful thank you. This seems like it will be a huge blessing. I really appreciate it!
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I finally used this feature today, and I'm amazed at the results.
I wrote my sermon with the general structure that I normally used and then turned to the Sermon AI feature to see what questions it would develop.
At first I used it to generate questions that were Life Application questions for Adults and Teens. I then went through the questions and selected a few of them to be the "Heading" slides that will be displayed as I preach different parts of my sermon. I was also able to revise one of the questions to become my Sermon Title (I have struggled for decades in creating sermon titles.)
Then I used it to generate questions that were Life Application questions for Children. I then selected one question to ask the children who would be part of our Children's Message time. After I added a bit of context before the question, my Children's Message was completed very quickly (I've struggled also in trying to figure out appriate tie-ins between my sermon and the children's message, so this is a great help.)
The fact that this was done based on my already written sermon is so helpful. The questions pick up my themes very well, and I don't feel like I'm presenting someone else's work, or trying to fit my thoughts and someone else's together.
Whoever guided the development of this feature has done a great job.
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Graham Criddle said:
I'd be interested to know what you are doing to get the alliterated titles.
Alliterated headings will often, but not always show up. For example, for John 1:1-14, I got:
1. Proclaiming the Eternal Word
2. Participating in the Light
3. Pondering Our Acceptance
4. Presence of God Among Us0 -
When I use the Sermon Assistant I can see where it will give me suggestions for illustrations and questions, but I do not have options for Outline and Application. What am I doing wrong?
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David Spencer said:
When I use the Sermon Assistant I can see where it will give me suggestions for illustrations and questions, but I do not have options for Outline and Application. What am I doing wrong?
What platform are you doing this on?
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Windows PC for the screen shot, but it does the same thing on my Mac as well.
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David Spencer said:
Windows PC for the screen shot, but it does the same thing on my Mac as well.
Please try again with the screenshot - using the paperclip icon in the forum editor
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I would like to be able to give the sermon assistant more direction in what I'm looking for. I've tried putting in very detailed language and specific directions but it seems to only be intent on the theme. As a result, I have to generate multiple outlines (sometimes up to 6) before I get one that has what I am really looking for in an outline. As I understand it, each outline generation is one AI credit so I've wasted 5 credits to get the one I wanted had it followed my directions. I used to have an AP like that.
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In short:
Passage : James 1:1-18
Theme: Semantic Grouping for James 1:1-18
run ai and usually get a spot on outline.
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