Ken M. Penner

The draft program is available and early bird registration for the TEI Annual Meeting in Krakow is open! Register by July 8 for the lower rate!

tei-c.org/news/2025/06...

Bono's Bible is the title of a book I'm co-authoring with another U2 fan.
We're posting some previews on Twitter (for now, despite its owner). Give us a follow if your conscience allows. Here's Biblical Allusions in U2’s “Iris (Hold Me Close)”. x.com/BonosBible/s...

Lecturer in Technologies in the Digital Humanities at UCL Apply now for the Lecturer in Technologies in the Digital Humanities role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

Lecturer in Technologies in the Digital Humanities at UCL

International Day of Human Fraternity | United Nations Taking note of all international, regional, national and local initiatives, as appropriate, as well as efforts by religious leaders, to promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue,...

Feb. 4: International Day of Human Fraternity, recognizing the values of compassion, mutual understanding, and solidarity. A UN observance since 2021, celebrating unity in diversity and promote dialogue, peace, and cooperation between cultures and faiths. www.un.org/en/observanc...

🚀 New Zotero Script: AI-Generated Abstracts! 📚🤖

Automatically generate abstracts for Zotero items with PDF attachments and no abstract using AI!

🔹 Requires an OpenAI API key
🔹 Runs in Tools > Developer > Run JavaScript
Get it here:
🔗 github.com/kmpenner/Zot...
#Zotero #AI

Biblical Allusions in U2’s “Yahweh” (How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, 2004)
kmpenner.hcommons.org/2025/01/27/b...

Fulfilling Jesus' reading of Isaiah

Yes, and since it's imperfect rather than aorist, I'd prefer "kept weaving".

IIRC, Young and Rezetko represent the minority view that Hebrew diachrony is impossible to disentangle. Hurvitz represents the conventional periodization. Hornkohl adds a transitional phase to Hurvitz's early & late phases.

It seems to me Aaron Hornkohl's views represent the scholarly consensus.

Where did the H in Nicholas come from?

I think there's some misunderstanding of what Hugging Face is. HF is a repository of models of various origins. It's like the archive.org or GitHub of AI. Van Strien's actions are not the actions of Hugging Face. Here's an HF-independent source: arxiv.org/abs/2211.05100

The intellectual property issue: it's currently possible for training to use only ethical sources. See arxiv.org/html/2412.06...

Here's some evidence. This Greek text has not previously been translated into English. kmpenner.hcommons.org/2024/03/19/w...

Some differences: ancient language (no longer spoken, limited corpus); copious secondary literature, plenty of grammatical and lexical publications.
LLMs are good at translation into English; some chatbots produce translations better than graduate students, and are orders of magnitude faster.

*willing=wrestling

I appreciate your input. Besides the immediate chapter I'm writing, I'm also willing with our responsibility at this point.
Should we be researching ways to make AI ethical, or should we be opposing its adoption? Or both: oppose until it's ethical?

As for accuracy, I expect we agree that ideas don't have to be perfectly accurate to be ethical in the classroom, or we wouldn't be allowed in!
But what is our error tolerance?
Chatbots are improving; will they ever pass that threshold?

Fair. Do you mean There IS no ethical classroom AI use (as things now stand), rather than There CAN BE no ethical classroom AI use (ever)?

I'm interested because I've been asked to write a chapter evaluating the usefulness of AI for Bible translation.
What if a LLM were trained without stealing IP and without excessive energy consumption?
What if it's used for things other than replacing thinking?
What if it becomes more accurate?

Agreed. I'm looking for evidence that 42 would be "old age" for most Romans, but I'm not seeing it in Scheidel, who provides these figures:

Thanks; I'll check their evidence.

doi.org/10.1017/S002...

I'm trying to reconcile that claim with the only specific evidence I know of besides inconsistent epitaphs: Philo, Opif. 105: ἀνὴρ δʼ ἄχρις ἑνὸς δέοντος ἐτέων πεντήκοντα, ἐς τὰ ἑπτάκις ἑπτά· πρεσβύτης δʼ ἄχρι πεντήκοντα ἕξ, ἐς τὰ ἑπτάκις ὀκτώ· τὸ δʼ ἐντεῦθεν γέρων.

What is the evidence that 42 is old age for most Romans? What do you mean by "old age"?

Samaritans kept using it.

Fair. I'm not aware whether the textbook does indicate awareness of AI's limitations or not. If not, yes, I see the irony.
From the CHE article I got the impression that the *professor* was aware of its limitations, and that's why she chose this image.

I am mainly interested in what you mean by "says it all". I imagine it is more than "AI makes mistakes." Is it "There are things AI cannot do, or cannot do well?"

'Stahuljak said she was glad to see the mockery because, after all, the cover is a “clever joke.” She said the image illustrates the book’s title of History & Fiction because it combines historically based images with fictional words.'

The Course Is About Literature. Its Textbook Was Generated by AI. News of the UCLA course has spurred worry and criticism, but its professor is unfazed. “I feel more empowered by this process,” she says.

“They’re not mistakes,” she said. “I would be very disturbed if people took it literally and thought that the expert in this class would have accidentally posted an image like that.” www.chronicle.com/article/the-...