There has been a lot of excitement over recent AI tools with speculation about how they might change the world (for better or worse) including how they might help us learn and understand concepts. I’ve seen examples and reports of people giving it prompts such as “What does The Urantia Book say about …?” Or “According to The Urantia Book, what is …?” While this can be useful, care should be taken so that it leads to helpful results.
Before I get into the details, I’ll give some of my relevant background. I have a computer science degree and have designed or developed AI-based systems over many years, including using natural language processing to generate quiz questions from training materials (which will be relevant below). I’ve been studying The Urantia Book for nearly 50 years, so I’ve tried using different tools in my studies for evaluating if the result is helpful or perhaps misleading.
It’s important to understand what these new tools are, and what they aren’t. They’re described technically as “generative” systems. They accept a prompt and generate a response that is in proper syntax and grammar and looks like a reasonable response to that prompt – but without understanding the question and without any guarantee that the answer is correct. The systems are trained using a great deal of text, most of which is correct and true, and thus they do a good job of appearing to give correct responses. But they can miss the point badly. For example, one lawyer used AI tools to create a brief that was submitted to the court. Unfortunately, the case references in the brief were made up. The syntax was good, they looked reasonable, but the cases didn’t exist, and thus certainly didn’t support the stated conclusions. In another example an AI chat system trained on The Urantia Book incorrectly responded when asked if Jesus came from a virgin birth.
The systems respond with confidence and in formal style which can mislead a reader as to whether it “understands” the question and is giving a correct or helpful response. However, there are ways to use these tools that can be beneficial. Below are some suggested uses, though to be clear there is no substitute for careful reading, followed by prayer, worship, and living and practicing the concepts studied. These systems can help with facts, but the mortal mind must still process these into values and meanings, and then live them experientially.
Summarize text
The tools do a good job of summarizing passages of text. They do a better job of summarizing text you provide than summarizing by referring to something. For example, if you want a summary of Paper 71 (I use this as an example because it came up in discussion recently), you can enter a prompt of “Summarize paper 71 of The Urantia Book.” But you will get better and more accurate results if you copy and paste the text of paper 71, for example “Summarize the following passage:” <insert Paper 71 text here>.”
Generate discussion questions
I’ve found these tools helpful for generating discussion question ideas for a paper, for example for a study group. As above, it’s advisable to copy and paste the passage or paper and submit it as part of the prompt to get the best results. In my experience, about 50% of the sample discussion questions are ones I’d consider sufficient for a study group, so it’s still necessary for someone to curate the generated responses and pick the best of them.
Strengths and weaknesses
Because the tools have been trained on a large set of text, it’s more likely to give a high-quality response on concepts unique to The Urantia Book. For example, if you prompt a tool with a question about Thought Adjusters it will probably give a helpful response. This is because almost all the text it on which it was trained regarding Thought Adjusters would have been based on The Urantia Book. If you ask it a question about a topic commonly taught by organized Christian churches though, it’s more likely to get it wrong. For example, with the question about virgin birth, the training text would have included a lot of examples of writing based on the Bible, and that affects the response.
In conclusion, these new tools can be helpful in studying and learning, but they will be more helpful if you copy and paste the text you would like it to summarize or analyze. The tools give more accurate responses regarding facts than regarding values and meanings. Finally, there is no substitute for the individual truth seeker to spend time in prayer, worship, and in living the truths and values they have discovered.
Michael Zehr has been studying The Urantia Book for most of his life and currently resides in Florida, USA with his daughter and their cat. He works and volunteers with the Urantia Book International School and has been an active member in the Association. He had a career as a software architect spanning decades that include computer learning and analysis tools.