Greg Hamblin , a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Las Vegas area, used ChatGPT to build a tool that helps him find answers to questions about his faith in sources he trusts. Hamblin is among those who send ChatGPT more than 70 million weekly requests about religion and faith, according to a new OpenAI report. Tracking down that information had previously led him to a university department, a biblical scholar, a podcast, or an official church publication. Searching each separately meant repeating the work. A broad internet search brought back results from sources he hadn't chosen, leaving him to sort through them. His solution was to build a website of his own, latterdaysearch.com . Hamblin, who handles marketing, finance, and technology for a law firm in Las Vegas, curated his own collection of sources for the site. Users can type a question in conversational language, and the tool looks for relevant material from those sources, even when the documents use different wording. The site's suggested questions include “How does grace work?” and “How can I recognize revelation?”
The results are links to articles, with excerpts showing the passages that appear most relevant. The site doesn't generate its own answers to religious questions. Hamblin wants to read what the authors actually wrote and decide for himself whether it addresses the question.
ChatGPT helped him figure out how to index material from sites that worked differently. Some offered feeds of new articles; others had different ways to access their content. Each source needed its own approach.
He wrote the first version himself in Python, a programming language he knew but says he wasn't especially good at. As ChatGPT became better at coding, he could add features he didn't know how to build alone. With help from Codex and other tools, the site gained filters and search modifiers, such as limiting a search to a particular author or excluding a word. “That's far beyond my skills,” he says.
Hamblin kept taking the site down because it cost money to run. Within weeks or months, he would miss it and bring it back. Now on his fourth version, he has decided to leave it online for others to try.
The payoff often comes during conversations on Facebook or Reddit. Someone raises a question about faith, and Hamblin searches for material that might help. One example he gives is how to keep your faith while going through a divorce.
For Hamblin, the value is in making a collection he trusts easier to explore, and rediscovering discussions that could help someone today. “It helps us find those again,” he says.
