The priestbot will see you now
In his 1973 movie “Sleeper,” director Woody Allen plays Miles Munroe, a man cryogenically frozen following a mishap during surgery, then revived 200 years later. As you might expect, Miles finds that things have changed drastically and — in some cases — prophetically. For example, items in the film that seemed futuristic and, perhaps, unlikely in 1973 are now common: organically engineered produce, for one — albeit the items in “Sleeper” include comically giant bananas and celery stalks — and a robotic dog that might be the sire of those now patrolling President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida. There’s also a church confessional booth in which supplicants recite their sins to a robotic priest who spits out a card that says “ABSOLVED.” Too far-fetched? Say hello to AI Jesus.
An experiment at the Catholic St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, featured a lifelike avatar of Jesus on a computer screen mounted in a confessional booth. During its two-month trial period, dubbed “Deus in Machina” (God in Machine), more than 900 participants asked questions about religious or secular concerns that typically might be put to a priest by supplicants. Participants were separated from the video screen by a lattice. The chatbot “GPT-4o” analyzed questions, and an AI generator used a real human voice and video footage of a real man to provide responses based on Scripture. The conversations were transcribed, but participants remained anonymous. According to the Associated Press, visitors took the experiment seriously. They asked questions on a variety of topics, “including true love, the afterlife, feelings of solitude, war and suffering in the world, the existence of God, plus issues like sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church or its position on homosexuality.” It was reported that in response to a question about why a woman can’t become a priest, AI Jesus “gave a somewhat concrete answer, stating that scriptures designate different roles for different people.” AI Jesus issued a warning to parishioners as they entered the booth: “Do not disclose personal information under any circumstances. Use this service at your own risk. Press the button if you accept.” A green light signaled that AI Jesus was ready to receive questions, and a green light let participants know that an answer was coming. Responses often came within three-tenths of a second, which project coordinators said is in line with human response time. Philipp Haslbauer, an IT specialist at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts who helped organize the technology behind AI Jesus, said responses to the project have been both positive and negative, with some calling it the “work of the devil.”
Chapel theologian Marco Schmid told AP that the project was meant to spur thought, not as a substitute for confessions with a priest. So, unlike the priestbot in Allen’s film, AI Jesus “wasn’t programmed to give absolutions or prayers,” Schmid explained. Sorry … no “Get Out of Hell Free” card for you!