2023-06-09 14:33:51
church day
How does artificial intelligence preach? Kirchentag gives answers
Visitors to the 38th German Evangelical Church Congress follow a Bible study. photo
© Daniel Karmann/dpa
With the help of artificial intelligence, high school exams can be solved and even university final exams can be passed. However, many people are unsure. And now AI is supposed to preach in the church too?
First things first: It’s a pretty emotionless affair. A service designed by artificial intelligence (AI) was celebrated at the 38th German Evangelical Church Congress. Several avatars can be seen alternately on a screen. They quote from the Bible, preach a sermon, say prayers. But they could just as easily have read out a discount store offer leaflet, the package insert for a drug or the timetable for the S-Bahn.
When quiet laughter erupts in the St. Paul Church in Fürth, it is more due to some phrases: the AI system working with voice assistants and avatars demands in the sermon, for example, that one should please pray regularly, read the Bible and go to church. Sounds a lot like the 1950s.
Immediately after the blessing donated by the AI, some visitors to the service are questioned. “I am very reassured. It has become very clear where the limits of AI are. The devices can only say what is on the network,” says one man. One woman finds it “incredibly boring, I’ve switched off, just like I do in not so nice church services”. She was shocked to hear “how much rubbish, how many standard sentences”. “Ah, religious bullshit bingo?” Replies moderator Jürgen Pelzer.
“AI is not omniscient, you have to give it training wheels”
The theologian Jonas Simmerlein prepared this special service. He fed the AI system with these key data: “It’s the Evangelical Church Day 2023 in Nuremberg and Fürth.” The system should hold a service with a sermon. “AI is not omniscient, you have to give it training wheels.”
So where is the journey going with AI in the service? Will a screen and a tablet soon be enough, will you no longer need theological staff, which has become rare in both the Catholic and Protestant churches? A large part of the Kirchentag audience was anything but convinced. “Too impersonal” is a feedback that people were able to give online. “We dared an experiment,” says the General Secretary of the Kirchentag, Kristin Jahn. The service was not only without singing and without organ, but also “without gestures, without facial expressions, without heart”. The sentence, spoken by AI, could be correct, but “the shine in the eyes is missing”.
Simmerlein says: “I would be very relaxed about it, nobody wants to replace churches and pastors with AI. Churches exist because people go there and say: I find support and comfort there. If artificial intelligence could now manage that people let an AI tell you something every Sunday – that’s how it is.” But that will probably not be the case. “Most people will say: I would like to have someone up front who is mortal, who has also experienced grief, etc. That’s why it won’t be that interesting for many people. But that doesn’t mean that things don’t change too can.”
“Artificial Intelligence Cannot Love”
The Erlangen theology professor and former chairman of the German Ethics Council, Peter Dabrock, advocates a middle ground when it comes to AI in the context of church and theology: “As far as AI is concerned, I would say at the current status: I have major problems when chatbots are used on the Internet would be for psychotherapy or pastoral care. According to the AI Act, which the EU is now planning, it is therefore rightly provided that it must be announced whether one is communicating with a bot or with a human counterpart.”
In other areas it is more relaxed. “If, for example, you have a conversation with ChatGPT while preparing a sermon, that’s a conceivable option – in addition to reading or a conversation in the community group. Whether that’s just as good is an open question. In any case, the technology shouldn’t be demonized in a religious context, but nor praise it to the heavens.”
The chairwoman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Annette Kurschus, had already commented on the subject of AI at Easter: “Artificial intelligence cannot love; it cannot empathize, cannot show understanding.” However, these so-called soft factors are crucial for human life, she said in an interview with the Funke media group.
The main reason why Christianity spread and lasted 2000 years is because in the beginning there were witnesses who spoke about Jesus, about his message, about his resurrection. They passed on their faith and enthusiasm. AI can’t do that (yet).
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