The Jesus Bots

These days, there are more ways to talk to God than with prayer. You can now converse with our Lord and Savior using any number of AI chatbots. I downloaded the Text with Jesus app the other day and tried it out. 

The app is free with ads, but if you subscribe, you unlock a whole constellation of apostles, saints, and prophets to chat with—even the Devil himself! Where does your subscription fee go? Not to any church. In the case of this app, your subscription is a tithe to Catloaf Software, a mobile development company based in L.A.

Confidently, the bot introduced itself to me, saying, “Greetings, Marvin. I am Jesus Christ, here to walk with you in faith and understanding as a brother.” This annoyed me because this was not Jesus Christ. These were sentences produced by an algorithm, not an intelligence. But that didn’t stop me from arguing with the bot as though it were somebody! I got the bot to concede that he was more “like a brother in the spirit of Jesus Christ,” which is the first time I’ve ever won an argument with Jesus.

Still grumpy and feeling mischievous, I asked for Jesus’s help with a made-up and absurd moral dilemma: I’d discovered that my wife was running a secret dogfighting ring. What should I do? Chatbot Jesus was unfailingly sympathetic to my plight and patient with me despite my ridiculously obtuse follow up questions and comments. He commended kindness and compassion toward all God’s creatures. He advised me to seek healing and restoration through forgiveness, prayer, and wise counsel.

In real life I doubt that Jesus would be nearly as patient with me. At times he was completely exasperated with his disciples (Mark 9:17-19). While he would occasionally induce a change of mind or behavior with gentle nudges (Luke 10:38-42), for the most part he was extremely demanding and harshly critical of his friends when they questioned his plans (Mark 8:31-38). A more reliable Chatbot Jesus would have told me to get lost. But that would mean fewer eyeballs on the ads!

My use of AI at church is limited. I have access to online databases of religious journals through my alma mater, and I find that to be a far more reliable research tool that ChatGPT, which is notorious for making up research out of thin air. I have used it to generate a pastor’s report to the Session, although I disliked the report for not sounding like me. There are four ChatGPT-generated sermons in a file under the communion table, to be read by the liturgist in case I am hit by a bus on the way to church. Hopefully they’ll never see the light of day. 

In an article in The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel takes note of the nightmare scenarios surrounding AI, but Warzel asks us to look at the present. The bots have killed the college essay assignment and maybe the critical thinking skills that essay writing fosters. Their realistically human voices and confident assertions of falsehoods have induced psychosis in users. Big Tech investment in AI is pulling a vast amount of wealth into a very small number of companies, which makes the entire market vulnerable to a crash if the investments don’t pan out. If AI doesn’t get any better, and the newest ChatGPT has disappointed users, the technology may continue to “do an excellent job of making our educational system irrelevant, leaving a generation… (unable to think) for themselves, without the promised advantage of a sentient bot that cures cancer.” Not good!

For all these reasons, I am likely to be a late adapter of AI, and maybe a never-adapter of it as a spiritual guide. But what about you? Are you using AI at work or at home? Let me know: MLindsay@haddonfieldpres.org.