Issue No. 9

Summer is over, and we're back! Dive in to catch up on the latest OpenAI releases, AI generated podcasts, exciting Bible translation news, and possibly the best Greek language learning app I've come across.

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∴ News

What's happening at the intersection of Bible Translation and Technology?

70 million people gained access to the Bible this year
In a 2024 report from Wycliffe, the number of people with access to some portion of scripture increased by 70 million since 2023! This is nearly equivalent to the total populations of California and Texas gaining access to Scripture. Furthermore, we seem to have hit a new milestone where the number of language groups without a translation or project in progress is now less than 1,000 for the first time. Praise God for the expansion of access to the Bible!

The Bible Aquifer website releases a live resource index
The Bible Aquifer is an open platform that allows users to "easily access openly licensed, freely available, and trustworthy Biblical resources through APIs." The Aquifer website now includes a searchable directory of supported and planned content for each language. If you're a developer, sign up for an API key.

Project Slingshot Field Experiment: Scripture Forge
A new report details an experiment where translation teams used AI-generated drafts as resources to improve translations. The conclusion? AI generated drafts were valuable resources when using model texts with similar translation styles:

Using model texts... with similar translation styles to the Crioulo project, Scripture Forge created valuable resources that helped translators improve their Bible translation. Resources with different styles were not helpful and slowed the team down. Generating multiple resources increased the chances of finding ideas to improve the text.

I applaud the team involved for documenting their learning and sharing it publicly. You'll want to read the full report.

∴ Apps

Applications and tools worth knowing about.

Scripturial: A Biblical Greek learning app
It's a bit early to say, but I think Scripturial might be the Greek learning app I've been looking for since my Greek journey began four years ago. A user experience akin to Duolingo employing a living languages approach focusing on Comprehensible Input, using Reconstructed Koine pronunciation! I've never so happily purchased a mobile app before. Check it out on Android and iOS.

Google's NotebookLM produces podcasts based on your sources
If you haven't tried it, Google's NotebookLM is an AI/LLM product that differs from most chat-based experiences. Designed to aid research, NotebookLM allows you to gather sources and use conversational AI to summarize and explore them. Their newest feature is delightfully creative: users can use AI to generate podcasts where hosts discuss one or more sources! NotebookLM is made by Google in collaboration with Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.

ScriptureRecall
I had a blast participating in Gloo's 2024 AI & The Church Hackathon in September. My team built ScriptureRecall, an app that uses AI chat experiences (voice and text) to help users memorize scripture. It even has a "discovery mode" where we used RAG to mix in a curated Scripture topic dataset to help users discover what passages they might want to memorize. The hackathon was a ton of fun; the food was great, and I met many amazing people. I hope to cover the hackathon in detail in a future issue.

∴ AI, Research, and other geekery

Papers, announcements, techniques, tricks, and other geeky stuff.

Creating a Translation Matrix of the Bible’s Names Across 591 Languages
A colleague of mine shared this paper published in 2018. It explores different techniques for creating alignments of 1,129 Biblical person and place names in 591 languages. Not only do the researchers share their methods for aligning these words, but they also share the resulting data set. Data covering this many languages could be helpful in various ways, such as improving automated alignments for whole Bibles and checking existing translations. I used NotebookLM to generate a short podcast explaining the paper:

OpenAI’s o1-preview model
OpenAI recently released a model to ChatGPT Plus users that is "designed to spend more time thinking before they respond." While it's unclear how this reasoning process works, the user experience implies that a coordinating process manages multiple model conversations. Each conversation explores an avenue related to the prompt, leading to answers that seem better for complicated issues. While I've seen a variety of reactions online, I've personally seen it excel at some complicated programming problems I needed help with. Take a look at what people are doing with it.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode Launches
Previewed months ago, the new advanced voice chat feature is finally landing for ChatGPT users. It includes additional voices to choose from, decreased response latency, improved interruption handling, and better intuition for when the user is speaking and when the user is listening. While I was recently experimenting with an AI voice chat feature in recall.bible, I came to appreciate how difficult it is to deliver a conversational user experience. As far as I can tell, this offering from OpenAI is best-in-class.

Code browsing cheat code: GitHub.dev
I recently came across an awesome Github easter egg. For any code repository URL, switch the .com TLD with .dev and you get a VS Code instance loaded in your browser window containing the files from the repo. If you have the correct permissions, you can even commit changes. This feature has apparently been around for three years — I can't believe I didn't know about it until now.

Contextual Retrieval: An approach to RAG from Anthropic
First, a refresher on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG):

RAG is a technique for inserting relevant data from a knowledge base into the context window of an LLM chat based on the content of a user's message using embeddings.

When I use RAG in various experiments and prototypes, I often find it promising and problematic. If your knowledge base can't fit in the context window of the language model you are using, it's been the best option. In this piece, Anthropic describes Contextual Retrieval as a way to improve RAG quality by adding context to each atomic piece of content that is embedded and vectorized.

Editio Critica Maior volumes on Revelation
The Editio Critica Maior (ECM) is a long-term project where extensive research is done on the text of the New Testament. It serves as a "foundational database" to the Nestle-Aland editions of the Greek New Testament that are published on an ongoing basis. This extended post on X (formerly Twitter) summarizes significant news that comes in the new volumes of the ECM which include interesting research regarding wording, punctuation, breathing marks, accents, versification, and the title of the book itself. From Nelson Hsieh.

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