A church in Lucerne, Switzerland has taken a bold step into the digital age. St. Peter’s Chapel has installed a hologram of Jesus, equipped with artificial intelligence, which receives confessions and gives spiritual advice to the faithful.
Called “Deus in Machina,” the project allows people to speak directly to a digital representation of Jesus. The faithful enter a modern confessional, where, through the grating, they see a screen displaying the face of Christ. It moves and answers their questions in real time.
The system is impressively advanced – it can speak 100 different languages and was programmed by a team of computer scientists and theologians from the University of Lucerne. For authenticity, the AI was trained using the New Testament and religious information from the Internet.
“Even though he’s a machine, he gave me so much good advice”
The results are surprising: two-thirds of visitors say they had a “spiritual” experience.
“I was amazed at how easy it was. Although he is a machine, he gave me so much good advice,” a believer told Deutsche Welle.
Not everyone is excited, however.
Some visitors find the answers “generic”, and a theologian from the University of Lucerne warns: “In matters of faith and pastoral care, we humans are clearly superior to machines.”
The church sees this experiment as an opportunity to discuss the role of technology in religion and suggests that such AI systems could help priests in the future by providing round-the-clock spiritual support.
The project was open to the public from August 23 to October 20, but there will be related events until the end of November.
Source: www.descopera.ro
