Sunday 10 December 2017

sunday school or psalm 10010111

After helping produce a podcast whose topic was speculating what sort of theological system a machine might make with access to all the world’s religious texts, our intrepid friends at Lewis and Quark (previously here, here and here) decided upon a slightly less ambitious experiment and tried to teach their neural network psalms from Judaism and Western Christianity. Most of the results were unsatisfying gibberish and beyond the programme’s comprehension (and perhaps a little strange that it comes at the same time that the Pope urges reform in the way that a phrase is translated, interpreted in the Pater Noster and we have to wonder about and perhaps re-examine our own language and liturgy) but there are some good lines and the structure fit the standard form so well, the words could be easily adapted to choral arrangement. What do you think? Oddly, the binary number translates to psalm one hundred fifty-one, the one about David slewing Goliath and then gives a prayer of thanksgiving.  Oh let them do no bungers in the mountains…