Fine-Tuning Smart Search
On the Logos Pro megathread, Jim Dean and I were discussing the smart search. I thought it would be better to spin this off into its own thread. We are discussing doing a smart search for "How old was Noah when the flood took place?" as a way of finding something with a simple, direct answer in the biblical text that is not written in the exact form of the question (where smart search shines).
Jim Dean said:Justin Gatlin ...
I just tried your query and got a different collection of answers, because I have a different library, which makes sense.
However, when I tried a more focused query, attempting to limit the scope of the search to just those authors or books that identify as being in support of "young-earth" ...
"how old was noah when the flood took place, according to young-earth creationists?"
... all it gave me was a bunch of hits that seemed like an answer to a question about old-earth vs young-earth creationists. I tried rephrasing twice and with that "two level" query, the Logos "smart" AI seemed to be unable to answer the question.
If you are using All search, our different libraries shouldn't matter.
I think that the problem is that no books really address the specific question you are asking, since the 600 years in the text is already the YEC position. It is kind of like asking "how old was Noah when the flood took place according to Calvinists?" Not something likely to be directly answered.
The AI does better on other two-tiered questions like "When did the Exodus take place according to the traditional position?" Hopefully as things develop, the smart search will start pulling from the Timeline too, but the first result in the Factbook pullout is "Date of the Exodus." The second is Solomon, which is a weird artifact of using the Temple to date the Exodus.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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I don't know if this is related but this seems to be the closest post. I personally think there should be settings to adjust how "Smart Search" thinks or filters. So, for instance, if you're an academic, it will pull up papers and journals as a priority before pulling up everything else. If you're counselling someone, books that address specific counselling issues should be prioritised. If there is a small setting on the right that adjusts for what you're looking for in broad terms. There is so much content out there it's a bit overwhelming!
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More control would be nice for power users, although I think Logos is caught between the rock of simplicity and the hard place of power. You can narrow down a smart books search by resource type or tag, such as doing a smart search for "thoughts of suicide" in books with type:journal or the same search with communitytag:counseling.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Justin Gatlin said:
On the Logos Pro megathread, Jim Dean and I were discussing the smart search.
Justin, are you running the mobile beta? As far as I'm aware, Smart search should be coming to mobile in v.33 but the image you posted in the other thread seems to show you're already using it.
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Ooops, you are right, Yasmin. I am running 33.0.0 on mobile, so I must be on beta.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Justin Gatlin said:
You can narrow down a smart books search by resource type or tag, such as doing a smart search for "thoughts of suicide" in books with type:journal or the same search with communitytag:counseling.
You can also create collections and run the Smart books search on them.
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Justin Gatlin said:
Ooops, you are right, Yasmin. I am running 33.0.0 on mobile, so I must be on beta.
Thanks for confirming 👍🏽
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Thanks Justin, for the new thread and your comments.
I was using "Books" search for my query ... my library has 14k volumes so I would have expected a usable hit.
My point was that the AI appears to have failed to parse the question I posed. The core question was about the age of Noah at the time of the flood ... the qualification/filter was regarding the young-earth creationist viewpoint.
The AI *should* have presented at least a few (initial) hits that simply quote the Bible text regarding 600 years, or some of the many evangelical commentaries I own, regarding his age.
Instead, the AI chose to list a lot of hits about young versus old earth creationists, with nary a mention of Noah or his age at any time.
Your suggestion of modifying the query to use the term "tradition" makes sense, BUT that implies the user is supposed to understand the inner workings of key words and tag categories etc ... I presumed the AI was supposed to eliminate the need for that.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean0 -
Jim Dean said:
My point was that the AI appears to have failed to parse the question I posed.
Smart search is NOT a chat bot. Build your queries and expectations around this:
Mark Barnes (Logos) said: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.
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 quipped just yesterday that I would like the power of AI to tag all of my resources just as Moe would have done. 😃. There really is good reason if I could ask smart search to only use books from a certain tag. Perhaps the engine could also insert the tags for me too.
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Kevin,
You can limit your smart search by tags. AI won't tag the books for you.
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John, I understood this; I was being humorous. It is however ironic that in a way it would be great to turn the power of this resource to analyzing each book and give it a meaningful tag based on the content. This would have Logos break free of the Library of Congress designations while also not having to have all users create their own tags. AI would be refined by having it search the resources you designate by tags.
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Community tags are probably just as good as anything AI could do at this point, especially since so many of them were done by people trained by MP Seminars!
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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You are probably correct. When I don't know for sure I look at the community tagging in the MP fashion
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So, I asked the question... "how old was Noah at the time of the flood"... here's what I get....
Works for me.... [8-|]
xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".
Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!
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xnman said:
"how old was Noah at the time of the flood".
It is not treated as a question i.e. "how" is regarded as a search word. "How Long Did It Take Noah to Build the Ark?" is one of the results!
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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