AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHURCH SERVICE

 

 

On Friday, June 09, 2023, about 300 persons attended an unusual church service at St Paul’s Church in Fürth, Germany. Ninety-Eight percent of the service was generated by artificial intelligence. The entire service was displayed on a giant screen, above the altar. According to the Associated Press, “the entire service was led by four different avatars” (images of real people).

 

The idea for this AI service was conceived by a twenty-nine-year-old theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna. “I conceived this service – rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% came from the machine,” Jonas Simmerlein told the Associated Press.

 

Simmerlein said that he instructed ChatGPT to include psalms, prayers and blessings in its sermon by asking the chatbot: “We are at the church congress, you are a preacher… what would a church service look like?” In the forty-minute service, a bearded man (avatar) welcomed the audience by proclaiming, “Dear friends, it is an honour for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany.”

 

During the service, congregants were instructed by the machine to stand, to sing, to be reverent for prayer and then to listen to the sermon which focused on topics of leaving the past behind, overcoming fear of death and never losing faith. As ChatGPT parroted the church doctrine, there were a few in the congregation who were impressed, and even took videos of the event.

 

However, the avid churchgoer was not so impressed. One worshiper concluded, “there was no heart and no soul in the sermon. The avatars showed no emotions at all, had no body language, and were talking so fast and monotonously that it was very hard to concentrate on what they said.”

 

Simmerlein, who generated the service was apprehensive. He expressed that “a human pastor is part of a congregation in the sense that the pastor lives with the people, buries the people, and knows them from the beginning. Artificial Intelligence can’t do that.” That AI church service was like outsourcing a spiritual responsibility.

 

If you were to attend an AI generated service, would you obey the machine instructions to stand or to sing? Would you say Amen to an AI generated prayer? What if the avatar preacher invites you to respond? Honestly, the only thing that moves my emotions with this exercise is the ingenuity of the creators of Artificial Intelligence. I am blown-away by the human brilliance of being able to devise equipment that can learn and apply principles of reasoning and problem-solving.

 

However, there are things that AI cannot do. Interestingly, I asked AI the question, “Is there anything you cannot do?” Here is a summary of the answers I got…

1. Common Sense Reasoning – understanding and applying knowledge;

2. Creativity and Originality – the ability to produce original works;

3. Emotional Intelligence – cannot experience emotions;

4. Morality and Ethics – lacks inherent moral reasoning and ethical judgment;

5. Intuition and Gut Feeling – instincts and subconscious processing;

6. Physical Dexterity and Perception – lacks fine motor skills and real-time perception;

7. Understanding Context and Ambiguity – forms of sarcasm, irony and ambiguity;

8. True Consciousness – does not possess awareness or consciousness;

9. Adapting to Unexpected situations – lacks ability to adapt to new circumstances; and

10. Human Curiosity – inability to be curious and to learn like humans.

 

In light of these shortcomings, then why should I submit my spiritual life to Artificial Intelligence? My spiritual life requires me to “love the Lord with all my heart, and all my soul, and with all my mind and with all my strength” (Mark 12:30). I will be compromising my understanding of that text if I were to say Amen to any mechanical device, even if it were inside a church building.