An AI experiment about AI, censorship and the Bible
Machine Learning is often presented as a magical solution to any and all problems. In this experiment, I explore the potential of this technology to help moderate what people write on the internet
I used Perspective API, a model developed by Google’s Counter Abuse Technology team and Jigsaw, that wants to “help ensure healthy dialogue online”
Perspective API can help mitigate toxicity and ensure healthy dialogue online
perspective API website
But instead of feeding the usual text (user comments and contributions), I gave it every sentence in the bible, and used the information returned by the tool to hide potentially offensive verses
About translation
While very powerful, the current tools don’t work very well with ancient hebrew, so a choice had to be made about what translation to work with
The New International Version (NIV) was a logical first choice, as it is the most popular one, but its licencing terms don’t allow reproducing the text in full. Instead, I decided to use the World English Bible, a Public Domain, modern English bible
To compare translations while reading, the user can click on the verse number. That verse will be opened on biblehub.com, where they can compare it with 27 different translations, including the NIV, King James version, etc…