We should have predicted the pervasiveness of AI 10 years ago. We all have Siri on our smartphones and have used Google for internet searches for years, which is a sandbox for a rudimentary version of AI.
Fast forward a decade and we now have generative AI, which can respond naturally to human conversations and serve as a tool for applications such as customer service and personalization of customer workflows. AI-powered chatbots, voice bots, and virtual assistants are becoming commonplace.
Today’s spiritual landscape is booming in the aftermath of a global pandemic and access to large-scale language models, and we are in a turbulent transition where new tools are upending entire industries. During this time, AI has emerged as a powerful tool that can find new connections between the spiritual and the physical, drawing our attention to information we may have overlooked.
From Bible interpretation to astrology readings, spirituality startups are finding ways to put generative AI to work.
The Bible – There’s an AI for that
For example, BibleGPT is trained on biblical teachings and presented as an interactive website where users can ask questions (“Please explain the resurrection”) and receive Bible verses and answers through a chat function.
The answer to this question was simple, but concise: “The resurrection is a central teaching of the Bible. It refers to the belief that Jesus Christ was resurrected three days after his death on a cross. This event is important because it demonstrates Jesus’ victory over sin and death and is the foundation of the Christian faith. The resurrection is mentioned in several places in the Bible, including the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as the letters of the Apostles. Christians believe in the resurrection as a key doctrine of their faith, as it gives them hope for eternal life and salvation.”
Perhaps this tool will help tech-savvy Christians level up their faith practice, perhaps offering new interpretations of the text by juxtaposing different parts with each other. Or perhaps newcomers to the faith who have never yet stepped through a church door will get the answers they need. But while it’s hard to believe this will ever replace the sense of belonging one gets in a Christian community, as a tool and catalyst it could be.
AI like BibleGPT promises to deliver a “spiritual” experience from the comfort of your home, delivering feedback from an imaginary pastor or priest on your screen via large language models. This may be questioned, given that the AI can only recite the information already available to it.
The Rise of Corona Chatbots
In an era where people are essentially trained to interact with chatbots, such as during the pandemic when people in the US were asking COVID-related questions, this technology is only set to increase.
As AI researcher Shira Eisenberg points out: WiredFuture models will be able to be trained on any text, religious or otherwise, the question is choosing which ones to interact with.
One day, she hypothesized, each person’s base model will be trained on their own values, which will result in conflicting information and advice across different people’s devices. But that’s not dissimilar to theological conversations that take place off screen. It all depends on whether you believe in a higher power, but if you do, it can be a way to connect with your faith.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Data and AI thought leader Dr. Alex Lui wrote in his column: Exploring the cutting edge of artificial intelligence Artificial Mental Intelligence (ASI) is a pioneering effort in AI development that aims to build systems that embody not only cognitive intelligence but also a deep understanding and integration of spiritual values such as compassion and moral reasoning. The effort is driven by an ambition to recreate a human-like spiritual experience, expanding AI capabilities to encompass existential inquiry, empathy, and understanding of the deep-seated human search for meaning and purpose. ASI is seen as a key milestone towards the realization of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which envisions the creation of machines that fully mirror human intelligence.
This field of research and the idea that at some point in the future we may see computers capable of mimicking the human brain’s capacity for emotional and spiritual experience, ushering in the age of “spiritual machines,” have inspired every bit of scary science fiction down through the years.
Can AI make the world a better place?
Article by Alessandro DiSanto of Harrow Artificial Intelligence Meets Spiritual Intelligence – How AI and Faith Can Make the World a Better Place Rather than fearing generative AI, he argued, we need to look at it from a different perspective.
“Perhaps the idea of artificial intelligence is scary for the same reason that parenting is scary: Children are a mirror that forces us to look at our true selves, how we actually live, rather than the ideal masks we try to project to the world. The parenting strategy of ‘do as I say, don’t do as I do’ never works, because the human mind learns not only by listening to commands, but also by observing and imitating the behavior of others.”
She continues that, just like our children, AI can “learn” from real-world data and use it to navigate future scenarios.
“Perhaps we fear that an AI will conclude that humans should be exterminated, because we know that the ‘training data’ we have produced in the world may not represent the best we have to offer.”
“We are by no means perfect, but what if we used this moment in human history as an opportunity to reflect on God’s example as the ultimate parent, loving unconditionally and sacrificing? What if we tried to teach AI by example every day so that it too could work to make the world a better place?”
