Deus in machina

Inevitably when I post something to the effect of "ha-ha, isn't this the weirdest thing you've ever heard?", my readers take this as some kind of challenge and respond with, "Oh, yeah?  Well, wait'll you get a load of this."

Take, for example, yesterday's post, about some "Etsy witches" who for a low-low-low payment of $7.99 will put a curse on Elon Musk (or, presumably, anyone else you want), which prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me a link with a message saying "this should significantly raise the bar on your standards for what qualifies as bizarre."  The link turned out to be to an article in The Guardian about St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, where they've set up a confessional booth -- but instead of a priest, it's equipped with a computer and an AI interface intended to be a proxy for Jesus Christ himself.

The program is called -- I shit you not -- "Deus in Machina."

You can have a chat with Our Digital Lord and Savior in any of a hundred different languages, and get answers to whatever questions you want, from the doctrinal to the personal.  Although, says theologian Marco Schmid, who is running the whole thing, "People are advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk.  It’s not a confession.  We are not intending to imitate a confession."

Which reminds me of the disclaimers on alt-med ads saying "This is not meant to address, treat, or cure any ailment, condition, or disease," when everything else in the advertisement is clearly saying that it'll address, treat, or cure an ailment, condition, or disease.

Schmid said that the church leaders had been discussing doing this for a while, and were wondering how to approach it, then settled on the "Go Big Or Go Home" model.  "It was really an experiment," Schmid said.  "We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI...  What would they talk with him about?  Would there be interest in talking to him?  We’re probably pioneers in this...  We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be – a theologian, a person or a saint?  But then we realized the best figure would be Jesus himself."

[Image credit: artist Peter Diem, Lukasgesellschaft]

So far, over a thousand people have had a heart-to-heart with AI Jesus, and almost a quarter of them ranked it as a "spiritual experience."  Not all of them were impressed, however.  A local reporter covering the story tried it out, and said that the results were "trite, repetitive, and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar clichés."

Given how notorious AI has become for dispensing false or downright dangerous information -- the worst example I know of being a mushroom-identification program that identified deadly Amanita mushrooms as "edible and delicious," and even provided recipes for how to cook them -- Schmid and the others involved in the AI Jesus project knew they were taking a serious chance with regards to what the digital deity might say.  "It was always a risk that the AI might dole out responses that were illegal, explicit, or offer up interpretations or spiritual advice that clashed with church teachings," Schmid said.  "We never had the impression he was saying strange things.  But of course we could never guarantee that he wouldn’t say anything strange."

This, plus the predictable backlash they've gotten from more conservative members of the Catholic Church, has convinced Schmid to pull the plug on AI Jesus for now.  "To put a Jesus like that permanently, I wouldn’t do that," Schmid said.  "Because the responsibility would be too great."

I suppose so, but to me, it opens up a whole bizarre rabbit hole of theological questions.  Do the two-hundred-some-odd people who had "spiritual experiences" really think they were talking to Jesus?  Or, more accurately, getting answers back from Jesus?  (As James Randi put it, "It's easy to talk to the dead; anyone can do it.  It's getting the dead to talk back that's the difficult part.")  I guess if you think that whatever deity you favor is all-powerful, he/she/it could presumably work through a computer to dispense some divinely-inspired wisdom upon you.  After all, every cultural practice (religious or not) has to have started somewhere, so maybe the people who object to AI Jesus are just freaking out because it's new and unfamiliar.

On the other hand, as regular readers of Skeptophilia know, I'm no great fan of AI in general, not only because of the potential for "hallucinations" (a sanitized techbro term meaning "outputting bizarre bullshit"), but because the way it's currently being developed and trained is by stealing the creativity, time, and skill of thousands of artists, musicians, and writers who never get a penny's worth of compensation.  So personally, I'm glad to wave goodbye to AI Jesus for a variety of reasons.

But given humanity's propensity for doing weird stuff, I can nearly guarantee this won't be the end of it.  Just this summer I saw a sign out in our village that a local church was doing "drive-through blessings," for your busy sinner who would like to save his immortal soul but can't be bothered to get out of his car.  Stuff like Schmid's divine interface will surely appeal to the type who wants to make religious experiences more efficient.  No need to schedule a confession with the priest; just switch on AI Jesus, and you're good to go.

I bet the next thing is that you'll be able to download an AI Jesus app, and then you don't even have to go to church.  You can whip out your phone and be granted absolution on your coffee break.

I know I'm not a religious type, but this is even giving me the heebie-jeebies.  I can't help but think that the Spiritual Experiences While-U-Wait Express Mart approach isn't going to connect you with any higher truths about the universe, and in fact isn't really benefiting anyone except the programmers who are marketing the software.

Until, like Gary Larson foresaw in The Far Side, someone thinks of equipping the Heavenly Computer with a "Smite" key.  Then we're all fucked.

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