Okay, I will admit it! I don’t understand AI and the threat it poses to the Church and the world. And when I do get it eventually, it will leap frog ahead of me and I will still be in the past.
But with that said, there was some hoopla about Fr. Justin an AI “priest” who would answer all your questions based on artificial intelligence.
Well, after two days, he was not well received and instead of being transferred he’s being laicized! But once a priest always a priest. AI told me that!
This is this morning’s sad, sad, report from the National Catholic Register:
Father Justin, we hardly knew ye.
Less than two days after debuting an artificial intelligence (AI) priest character to overwhelmingly negative reviews, Catholic Answers has given “Father Justin” the virtual heave-ho.
The lay-run apologetics and evangelization apostolate, based in El Cajon, California, told the Register that it will replace him on its app with a lay character named “Justin” within a week.
“We won’t say he’s been laicized, because he never was a real priest!” Catholic Answers said in a written statement to the Register late Wednesday afternoon.
9 comments:
Since I use the internet purely for news (including this blog and associated commentary), weather, my own 12 entry blog where it was 11 entries in 3wks for a year and a half and only recently thought of one thing which needed adding, email to stay in touch with one person, have no tv or desktop computer and use only a phone, following every technoid frivolity is not in the DNA.....
I would not even have the phone/internet had tv or even radio not turned into a sewer and still been reliable places to trust for news/weather rather than unrelenting grossest advertising...even the internet now nearly impossible to navigate/channel-station flip without being hammered by nasty trash, and my time on it is drawing to a close. There is life, and then there is the internet.
Oh....as for AI being a threat, same as internet and cell phones, it is coming into being, not for any real need, but simply because it is the latest thing which people and businesses simply MUST have, and ramifications be hanged...
and now the entire world dependent upon them, death and destruction without them, death and destruction when they fail (and all things fail), so, of course, let's add another drug to civilization's addiction, and it IS an addiction.
I liked the world far better when it worked perfectly fine without the crap, and people had jobs rather than machines/computers having the jobs.
Well, since everyone else here is jumping in, will talk about the real threat in AI, which, since it is a self-programmable computer, goes back to the earliest computer science phrase of "garbage in/garbage out".
AI is entirely dependent upon the information it finds, it does no original research, has no life experience, and is utterly dependent upon what others say/input for knowledge. It samples the internet and research of others to draw its conclusions.
When you look on the internet regarding some subject on which you have real expertise, you will find 90%+ of what is on the internet said regarding that subject by other people to be idiotic and pathetic. The internet has opened the world to allowing any idiot with a keyboard to spread pure garbage which is picked up and echoed by others until it dominates. This junk is what AI finds on any subject.
Add to that the internet has become one of the most highly censored and filtered media types in all of history, and the censors with their own agendas, and this is the data base upon which AI makes its decisions.
In short, AI represents the ultimate media echo chamber and people are in a rush to allow it to control everything from public media itself, to weapons and infrastructure. All apart from the biases of the initial AI programmers who are not expert in anything past programming.
What a weird little incident in the American Catholic world. They probably would've been better off making a Jimmy Akin-Trent Horn amalgamation than some weird take-off of an older parish priest (no offense, Father!). That and given it to Gen Z-aged Catholics for rigorous pre-release testing for both doctrinal accuracy and protection from trolls.
Nick
Nick, let's send them a photo of cherubic smiling Father McDonald to use for the priest! If that spot is taken, how about for the coin operated confessional or the Heaven Or Hell slot machine?
Bob,
You didn't specifically mention Zoltar the Fortune Teller--er, Confessor--so I'll be claiming that trademark as my own.
Nick
Nick, my quarters are your quarters. I'll be watching for you to appear at the local churches near the grand pianos down front.
AI is just this year's 3D printer. The chattering class chatters about it endlessly; predicts the whole world will change due to it...and then something else comes along and no one cares anymore.
Monkmcg, it is the same passing fad as the algorithms censoring google, facebook and cameras deciding what shows in photos and criminal suspect data bases, and same technology but self-learning, and same effect as the passing fad of internet and cell phones.
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