I’m more than a little suspicious about generative artificial intelligence: a mix of feelings about slop culture; the devaluation of mental work; the risks both to property rights and open culture; the risks to our economy; and the pressure on our environment, among others. Do the risks outweigh the opportunities? And will it assemble fantasy facts and spurious citations? Better to look, and review than wonder and let my imagination wrongly overvalue or undervalue it.
But where to begin? A few months ago, I used ChatGPT and a couple of image generators, but everything was vague or too uncanny. I came across a video produced by Google’s NotebookLM today, and thought I’d give it a try — with Universalism, of course.
My first attempt used a short prompt about the Winchester Profession. NotebookLM proposed a set of authority documents — one from one of my own sites — and I filtered out a couple of suspicious sources, but all the rest were denominational-adjacent. The results were disappointing, and the podcast-style audio was absolutely eerie. Because of the sources, Universalism was compared and contrasted with Unitarianism, which I hadn’t mentioned and attempts to filter Unitarianism out failed. The products reminded me of pamphlets — and a telling of liberal religion — that neither speaks to me, nor looks (as best I can tell) like the UUA today. If anything, it reminded me of pamphlets from twenty to fifty years past. Not useful.
So I asked for “Christian Universalism and not Unitarian Universalism” and this coughed up more theological sources: both patristic and current writers in a group I think of as neo-Universalist. The sources made the outcome, naturally enough. Generated audio and video is peppered with informal uses and verbal ticks which by definition is unnatural. I have a study guide that I’ll need to examine closely.
But this graphic looks pretty good to me. But Universalism historically has suffered a labor shortage, and the right tools may make more possible for its future, so worth more exploration and an examination of the risks and benefits.