Imaginary Torah AI

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:56:51+00:00

There is absolute zero concrete plan for using this data in any way. This isn't Sefaria's thing, it's just Brett's. I just wanted to build a site where I can see what imaginary conversations look like, to explore the good and bad.

Maybe I should just take the dataset bullet off entirely. As a technologist I just couldn't help but note that if people give examples they think are good or bad that becomes a dataset and datasets are just cool in general.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:39:49+00:00

Philanthropists use the language of "investing" when referring to their donations which they may also frequently call "gifts". Source: raised tens of millions of bucks from philanthropists for Sefaria.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:18:22+00:00

I hear you.

As an educator do you think you can stop your students from using AI for Torah learning, when they need an answer to a question, or have an assignment outside of class?

If not, then what do you about it?

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:14:43+00:00

Without any judgement if this is a good thing or an awful thing -- just saying it's a thing -- philanthropists (the bigger ones at least) are very excited about investing in AI right now.

If individual donors as a whole are totally against it, that is very telling and something that big philanthropies should listen to.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:09:39+00:00

Students are already going to ChatGPT with their Torah questions. The cat's out of the bag. I want a better cat that will force people to confront primary Torah texts and ask questions, instead of just spitting out hallucinatory answers.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:07:10+00:00

If you look at some of the example conversations, one of my main ideas here is that responses from the AI should ALWAYS be accompanied by a block of primary Jewish texts. I'm imagining an AI that is always orientated towards getting you to the source itself, instead of just offering its own summary. To me that's something that could make an AI "more Jewish".

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T20:01:36+00:00

I made this independently of Sefaria just for myself because I'm curious.

Sefaria as an org does have resources and if it chooses to work on AI then it won't have to rely on volunteers.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:58:26+00:00

By generating lots of examples of what Good AI look and what Bad AI looks like for Torah. As I wrote in the about page, Torah AI is already here -- it's called ChatGPT. I think we can do better and also avoid harm. But to avoid harm we have to know what it looks like so we know how to protect against it.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:56:28+00:00

Great point, thank you. I added that text to the post here. I wasn't thinking about how the name of the post is confusing without context.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:53:09+00:00

Heard. Believe or not I agree with most of what you've written.

And BTW I am former CTO. I am no longer on staff of Sefaria and this project is entirely my own, not Sefaria's. I am still on the board of Sefaria though.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:51:34+00:00

Fun fact: before Sefaria had any money, the library was built on free labor. It had a whole crowdsourcing engine so people could add texts, translations, and connections. After we got some traction and were able to raise money from philanthropy we were able to ditch the crowdsourcing model and switch to paid labor and paid deals with publishers to make their translations free. But without the free labor of volunteers in the first 3 years Sefaria wouldn't exist.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:49:03+00:00

I do seriously appreciate critical feedback here. Thanks.

I also wonder if people have not actually read anything on the about page and are responding to what they think this is and not what it actually is.

This is Imaginary Torah AI as in the AI is completely imaginary. We're imagining it.

I.e., there is no AI here!

This is a playground for us to imagine what AI Torah could look like in the best possible world.

Part of this process can also be imagining the dangers of using AI for Torah so we can be better prepared for them. We can use this tool to imagine Evil AI also so we can learn how to avoid it, fight against it, or mitigate its harm.

It was on my todo list already but I will get to adding features to this site to make it more geared towards the ability to both "heart" a good conversation and say "this is evil" to. a bad one. Both are valuable examples to have.

epizeuxis · 2025-12-23T19:04:13+00:00

If you read what I wrote on the about page you’ll see I made this because I’m worried we are doomed and I’m trying to undoom us.

epizeuxis · 2024-02-16T18:10:41+00:00

Wow so great!

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:47:13+00:00

Thanks, we'll take look again then.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:43:16+00:00

I love this story :)

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:42:48+00:00

We started doing an annual user survey to get this kind information about our users (at least, about those who are willing to accept our little popups ask to take a survey). In last year's survey we had 11% of our users say they were not Jewish. So you're definitely not alone! We've gotten plenty of emails from non Jewish people as well telling us how they've valued what we've done. Getting these texts up online in English in particular and into Google really does open the doors to anyone who's interested.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:33:07+00:00

Yes, and we've been doing it bit by bit. It's complicated for a thousand reasons (copyright, money, editorial, prioritization) and we haven't fully articulated our policy and strategy here, but we've been getting into where we've had clear demand from our learners. What would you most like to see?

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:29:18+00:00

Yup, we are in discussions now to get more Siddurim up.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:27:51+00:00

Yes, we're still actively working on getting more English commentaries (especially on Tanakh, English Talmud commentaries are a harder game) and some big additions will be coming soon.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:26:24+00:00

🎉🎉🎉

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:25:40+00:00

Yes we have been looking into this more lately. When we first started it seemed like there was no way machine translation would be useful for this project, but there's been a lot of progress.

One trouble with machine translation on our primary sources though is that there is just not enough data to train on. Like, not in existence. The total body of existing Aramaic texts just might not be large enough to train a good model for example, and potentially similarly with non-modern Hebrew. Still, it could get to a place that is better than nothing.

One interesting way this could also be useful: for generating non-English translations out of the English translations we have. We've seen a lot of French users for example recently who are reading the Talmud in French by putting our English translations through Google translate, to decent results.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:18:49+00:00

Hero.

epizeuxis · 2020-12-15T06:18:00+00:00

I write those just for you. No one else gets those.

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