Researchers and religious leaders on Wednesday released findings from a two-month experiment through art in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland, where an avatar of “Jesus” on a computer screen — tucked into a confessional — took questions by visitors on faith, morality and modern-day woes, and offered responses based on Scripture.
The idea, said the chapel’s theological assistant, was to recognize the growing importance of artificial intelligence in human lives, even when it comes to religion, and explore the limits of human trust in a machine.
After the two-month run of the “Deus in Machina” exhibit at Peter’s Chapel starting in late August, some 900 conversations from visitors –- some came more than once –- were transcribed anonymously. Those behind the project said it was largely a success: Visitors often came out moved or deep in thought, and found it easy to use.
This remembers me of an AI Catholic Father who lost “his cassock” after hallucinating. His “AI Jesus” will hallucinate, too, it’s just a matter of time.
(I actually like AIs, NLP as well as related fields, concepts and tools, but it’s the reality of the current state of LLMs, they hallucinate; while hallucination is fine for tasks such as a “digital Ouija board” or surrealist/Dadaist poetry, it’s not desirable for things that needs strict consistency, such as STEM knowledge as well as knowledge from dogmatic religions, in this case, Catholic matters and knowledge)
Another problem with the “AI priest” was that people were going online to confess to it. It was replying in character, simulating the sacrament. Problem is, you can’t even confess to a real priest anywhere other than in person. The people in charge realized how bad this was and made the change.