Protestants employ Blessing Robots but AI refuses to celebrate Latin Mass.Orders of Artificial Intelligence are totally and utterly void.

Church, Giggle, AI

For the first time, an artificial intelligence celebrates a service at the Protestant Church Conference. Is that fascinating - or embarrassing? 

A Protestant Blessing Robot (2018)

AI service: Service at St Paul's in Fürth: "I believe in the Holy Spirit," says the avatar coolly.

Short preface: This text was not written by ChatGPT and was not produced with the help of a computer command. It is therefore not perfect, and some of it could be seen quite differently. As a product of old journalism, it is deliberately subjective. That is, it is not beyond all doubt and self-doubt. It does not spare emotions, but on the contrary uses them to make the author recognisable, in all his strengths and weaknesses, insights and errors, prejudices and subsequent insights. But read for yourself:

Everything looks normal on this Friday at the Protestant Church Congress. At the entrance to St Paul's Church in Fürth, the usual scene these days: crowds of people waiting to be admitted. A school class bridges the waiting time with singing, information stands are set up next to the church. A small meadow with chairs, tables and the inevitable Kirchentag stools invites people to linger. Many people wear the colourful Kirchentag scarves. Artificial intelligence is being discussed everywhere, a tense expectation is in the air. A premiere atmosphere. In a moment, the almost 300 visitors will stream into the church. For the first AI service at a church congress. Can it work?

Blonde woman in white blouse

Here we go: "Alexa, start the service!" To set the mood, a short jazz piece is played in the church; like all the texts, it is produced by GPT-3 - an artificial intelligence. Then the avatar of a blonde woman in a white blouse appears on the screen. The first thing she says is, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

And after a short pause: "Welcome to the AI service at the Protestant Church Congress in Nuremberg and Fürth. I am GPT, an artificial intelligence language model. My job is to answer questions and provide information on various topics." And later:

"I have access to knowledge databases and can communicate in several languages ... I am very happy to welcome you to this beautiful city." And so on and so forth. And so it will go on for almost an hour, in this stilted, soulless language, to which everything sensual and concrete is alien, but also every joke, every irony and every poetry. Instead: standard sentence after standard sentence, as exciting as a dripping tap. As if someone were reading from the phone book, one would have said in the past, when there was no AI. But the adoring public is still listening.

Things are getting restless in a pew

Now it's the turn of an avatar with a whisker and a lilac jacket. He reads the well-known Bible passage from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, about how there is a time for everything, for laughing and crying, for loving and hating, for peace and war. An exciting passage, but like everything else in this service it is read too quickly and without any emphasis. Nevertheless, one enjoys the strong, pictorial language. Now all it would take is an eloquent, passionate pastor to open the hearts of the audience. The Avatar, unfortunately, is the opposite of that. In a pew, it is beginning to get restless; there is whispering and laughter.

The sermon deals with the 1st Epistle of Paul to the Philippians 3, 13-14. In it Paul writes basic things about humility, but also about general human faults. Surprisingly, the avatar quickly ends up with artificial intelligence, which, very similar to humans, often remains in the past and misses out on real life. "But the beauty of AI is that it can move on from past mistakes and get on with its life."

There are giggles in the front pews, the shaking of heads intensifies, and an elderly couple leaves the church. Did we just witness the incarnation of AI or what! Or is this just hocus-pocus? A topic for the AI Father's Day outing?

Obviously, it becomes clear during this service, AI is a master of comedy, especially unintentional comedy. So it takes about half an hour before there is the first burst of laughter in the time-honoured Fürth church. That is when one of the avatars on the screen in the sanctuary says: "May the wisdom of my faith help build a more just world for all." In his monotone, emotionless voice, he says it and doesn't make a face at it. How could he! He is just the text recitation machine here. The audience shakes their heads, murmurs and laughs, as I said.

It was all boring and banal, many complain in the subsequent panel discussion. Heard a thousand times before, usually better. During the blessing at the end, the avatar did not even raise his hands, that was gross nonsense, liturgically and theologically at the same time.

Grace cannot be programmed

Jonas Simmerlein speaks up. He is an AI artist from Vienna and the brains behind the AI service. "I also missed the pastor walking through the sanctuary and climbing up to the pulpit before the sermon," says the theologian. "Sometimes it's just little things like that, but they make for authenticity. Or they don't."

The fact that the entire altar is covered with a screen, and that there is a microphone and two laptops in the baptismal font, is also met with criticism and surprise by the visitors to the AI service. "Not a single candle in sight, we didn't sing either," says a theologian from Erlangen, who criticises the coldness and sterility of the event as a whole. A visitor articulates her longing for the "natural intelligence". "It was certainly a successful promotional event, but very different from what the AI people imagined." Much applause.

This fits with what theology professor Johanna Haberer wrote last issue in Christ& Welt (No. 25/2023): the old great, divine, human concepts of religion - grace, forgiveness or mercy - cannot be programmed.

Much hype about nothing

Melitta Müller-Hansen, the broadcasting commissioner of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, also expresses criticism: "The prayer language was all talk, the sequence without dramaturgy, the wonderful art of speaking is lost, faith functions with statements like 'you must, you shall'." And she asks, "Is the AI speaking on behalf of God?" On the avatars' emotionless way of speaking, she says, "The throat is the soul." So with the human voice, she says, one immediately recognises their state of mind. The sparse music, on the other hand, seemed to her "like lift music". Her conclusion: a lot of hype for nothing. The analogue offerings on radio and television are worlds better.

Anna Puzio, a technological anthropologist (an avatar might have invented the term) from the Netherlands, must have felt pretty lonely in the face of such broadsides. "Boring, banal sermons were said to have existed even before AI," she says. And the wooden appearance of the avatars? "That will change," she is convinced. All in all, the service was "a cool thing".

No enthusiasm among the faithful

Heike Burkhard later says that many students probably see it that way too. The former teacher has experienced time and again that young people are much more open-minded about technical innovations than older people who feel disturbed in their viewing and listening habits. They have a greater sense of the enormous potential that lies in developments such as AI. Personally, however, Heike Burkhard was rather disappointed. The sermon, which she followed as a livestream, seemed to her "like a contemplative essay". The lawyer Wolfram Steckbeck, initiator of the Nuremberg commentary services, missed above all the empathy and contemporary language of the robot pastors. The sermon for him: a stringing together of Wikipedia wisdom.

So was a model for the future presented in Fürth, which shares a city border with Nuremberg, possibly even fascinating, or was it just a laughing stock with a high embarrassment factor? The faithful, at any rate, did not seem really enthusiastic about the performance, all things considered. The experts, how could it be otherwise, are divided. The only consensus across all borders is that development should not be left to Alexa & Co.

Source

Cathcon:  ChatGpt got it right when asked to celebrate a Latin Mass.

"I'm sorry, but as an AI text-based model, I cannot physically perform or participate in any religious ceremonies, including the celebration of a Latin Mass. Additionally, the Latin Mass is a specific form of the Roman Catholic liturgy, and I don't have the ability to engage in religious practices or rituals.

However, I can certainly provide information and answer questions about the Latin Mass or any other topic related to Catholicism or other religions. If you have any specific inquiries or need assistance with anything else, feel free to ask!"