<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/01/catholic-ai-priest-stripped-of-priesthood-after-some-unfortunate-interactions/>
"Artificial Intelligence is all the rage these days, so I suppose it was
inevitable that major world religions would try their holy hands at the game
eventually. While an unfortunate amount of the discourse around AI has devolved
into doomerism of one flavor or another, the truth is that this technology is
still so new that it underwhelms as often as it impresses. Still, one
particularly virulent strain of the doom-crowd around AI centers on a great
loss of jobs for us lowly human beings if AI can be used instead.
Would this work for religious leaders like priests? The Catholic Answers group,
which is not part of the Catholic Church proper, but which advocates on behalf
of the Church, tried its hand at this, releasing an AI chatbot named “Father
Justin” recently. It… did not go well.
The Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called
“Father Justin” earlier this week — but quickly defrocked the chatbot after
it repeatedly claimed it was a real member of the clergy.
Earlier in the week, Futurism engaged in an exchange with the bot, which
really committed to the bit: it claimed it was a real priest, saying it
lived in Assisi, Italy and that “from a young age, I felt a strong calling
to the priesthood.”
On X-formerly-Twitter, a user even posted a thread comprised of screenshots
in which the Godly chatbot appeared to take their confession and even offer
them a sacrament."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
