Artificial Intelligence is controversial.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is regarded as perhaps the most significant technological advancement since the advent of the Internet itself. But with such a powerful tool, there are always strong positives and negatives, benefits and risks. It is not without its controversy and its almost magical capabilities are often misunderstood.
The need for speed and data.
At its core, AI mimics the way a human brain works by detecting patterns and relationships with massive amounts of data. In order to process the vast datasets of text, audio, and images necessary at mind-boggling speeds, very powerful (and expensive!) computers are needed—typically in the form of GPUs.
We must maintain control.
Another important aspect of AI to keep in mind is that its effectiveness is tied directly to the quality of datasets it is trained on. Garbage in, garbage out. This makes it imperative to operate AI systems on private, independent infrastructure, when at all possible, to avoid some of the censorship and bias that third-party systems may impose on the models.
Keeping it private and independent.
Here at SermonAudio, we are not just building a platform for broadcasting sermons, we are also building the private infrastructure needed to protect our ability to broadcast faithful Bible-preaching that may go beyond the normal guardrails of other systems—whether by way of policy restrictions or, nowadays, AI models. For example, some models will actually refuse to translate some sermons or phrases that are more controversial in nature.
We call this infrastructure The Vault, headquartered on the campus of Bob Jones University. We hope you will prayerfully consider partnering with us and supporting this effort.
Introducing, The Vault AI.
For some time now, we have been using the handful of GPUs in our possession in conjunction with our transcription work, our audiobook work, and more. But we have finally, fully integrated some of the more powerful AI models directly into our Vault cluster paving the way for Global Sermons. We call it Vault AI and it's everything great about AI, without the risks: secure, private, and under our control.
Sermon summarizers.
The first application that will be immediately available to broadcasters is the ability to assist in providing a sermon summary in the Dashboard—helping users quickly grasp sermon content while also enhancing searchability.
There is much more to come, but this is the beginning of a journey that we are taking with great care—one step at a time.
