The prediction that artificial intelligence will steal our work and take over the world may allow us to think that it plays God.
The “Thru” of religious apps encourages “millions” to “confess to AI chatbots,” and said that Futurists and some digital services “claim that they are leading God himself.”
“Greetings, my child.”
Apple's App Store is “overflowing” with religious apps. One of them, known as Bible Chat, claims to be the world's number one faith app with over 25 million users. “Hallow, a Catholic app, beat Netflix, Instagram and Tiktok, ranked number one in the store at some point last year,” said the New York Times.
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The Bible Chat website claims that AI is “exclusively trained” and was developed with “guidance” by pastors and theologians. However, the little outfit took the chatbot a step further, specifically training them to “react like they're gods.”
Patrick Lashinsky, CEO of such a website, said Chatwithgod: When the New York Times writer asked the app if it was actually a god, it replied, “Greetings, my child.”
“Cheap Parler Tricks”
Some of these services are “no more than a cheap parlor trick behind the scenes,” Futurist said. They are “essentially reshuffling sacred texts using clever statistical modeling,” and AI's “strong tendency to please its users” can “have unintended consequences.”
Paul Kings North of the Wall Street Journal said that too much faith in AI is a dangerous path. “We remember that God is, even mystical, the ultimate power of the world. Or we can continue to try and replace him. Every old story is clear about the consequences of that particular hubrifying act.”
However, some of these services “address the access issue,” the New York Times said. “In the case of the millennium, people long for spiritual guidance,” but they “sometimes had to travel far away to reach spiritual leadership.” In contrast, chatbots are “always at the user's fingertips.”
With around 40 million people leaving churches in the US over the past few decades, these apps could “lower the barriers to reentering spiritual life.” In the UK, “there are generations of people who have never been to churches or synagogues,” says Ravision Nathan Roman of Maidenhead Synagogue, which says that spiritual apps could be “the path to faith.”
Pray.com's chief technology officer Ryan Beck said these chatbots are “generally 'yes',” but he doesn't feel this is a problem. “Who doesn't need a little affirmation in their lives?”
