Rev. Todd Eklof teams up with a variety of Artificial Intelligent tools and Wikipedia to create an amazing set short videos high lighting ancient Greek Philosophers. Besides being engaging, visually stunning and informative, Todd claims the videos were easy and quick to create.
We hope you enjoy the videos and subscribe to the YouTube Channel for notifications has more philosophers
are added to the series.
Canadian, Mary Bennett reflects on her own journey as a Unitarian and what it means to her currently to be a Unitarian during these times of challenge and change.
There is much uncertainty and uneasiness about what Artificial Intelligence will mean for our future but, for now, it’s already being employed by millions of people to save time researching, writing, creating art, and producing media. Not wishing to be left behind, I recently started dabbling with AI myself and have been overwhelmed by its creative possibilities.
My exploration began by taking a children’s story I’d written several years ago about a mama bear and her hungry cubs. I pasted its transcript into ElevenLabs AI, a text-to-speech program, chose a voice, and within seconds had a flawless voice-track telling the story. Then I asked ChatGPT to create a storyboard. The story was immediately broken down into scenes, complete with descriptions that I could then use as image prompts in Leonardo AI, a text-to-image program. After I had all the original AI generated royalty free pictures needed for the story, I animated and made them 3D in LeiaPix AI. Finally, I asked Tracksy AI to compose an original piece of music, lullaby-like, to play in the background (also royalty free). Then I edited it all together the old-fashioned way, using Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
The most time-consuming part of the process was the extra time it took to learn these various (mostly free) programs and how best to prompt them for my desired outcomes. (It’s a whole lot easier than learning the symbolic language necessary to code!) This only amounted to minutes, not hours or days. That’s it! Check out the accompanying link to see the outcome for yourself.
By NAUA President, Rev. Dr. Todd Eklof
The August 2023 Issue of the Liberal Beacon is now available.
Featured Articles
Rev. Cummings picks on Carl Sagan’s famous description of the mystery and wonder of life on our :”pale blue dot” in an unfathomably large universe.
Sept. 19, 4:30 PM PDT (7:30 EDT)
Ken Ing looks at Unitarian life in a age of identity politics.
We are very pleased to highlight this exceptional video. Ken has created some compelling and engaging slides and narrates the phiolosopy and ideas that are propelling the current wave of anti-racism. A must see and share for concerned Unitarians
The ideological differences causing rifts in many UU Congregations did not originate in Unitarian Universalism. Many countries that trace their heritage back to the Enlightenment are experiencing an ideological tug-of-war between traditional liberals and an identity-centric movement. Most traditional liberals don’t understand the belief systems underlying the identity-centric movement. Ken’s talk will attempt to explain those belief systems, and the reasoning behind them. He will be synthesizing the insights and perspectives of numerous books and other published writings. Ken believes we can’t resolve a conflict if we can’t articulate the perspectives of both sides.
Ken Ing retired in 2019 after spending his entire career in Information Technology. He lives in the northwest portion of the state of Washington. He is a frequent contributor to the local UU Fellowship’s adult learning program, creating 13 talks over the past 4 years, usually about history or politics. He is a member of the NAUA Academy Advisory Board
America’s current moral reckoning with its racist past and present too often proves more divisive than constructive. The National Center for Race Amity (NCRA) seeks to move the public discourse on race beyond the blame-grievance-rejection framework to one that recognizes and celebrates our ability to overcome racial prejudice through association, amity and collaborative action.
The perspective of “The Other Tradition” is that the dominant tradition of racism has always had a parallel moral counterweight which held at its core humanistic and spiritual values that promoted racial and social justice. This introduction will share stories of Race Amity in history – as well as current, local examples of Race Amity in Action – from which NCRA affiliates have developed educational programs in libraries, churches and community centers.
Facilitator Joyce Francis, Ph.D., taught international affairs at George Mason, Tulane, and American University. She is a member her county Friends of Race Amity, as well as a member of Quimper UU Fellowship in Port Townsend, WA, and co-facilitator of its 4th Principle Affinity Group.