Guys, it looks like we've got another robo preacher to worry about.
The Episcopal Church is launching an AI chatbot called "AskCathy," because even in cyberspace the Episcopalians gotta throw a woman in there to take the lead.
Short for 'Churchy Answers That Help You,' AskCathy was given a soft launch in June after being developed by the Toronto United Church Council's Innovative Ministry Center and the TryTank Research Institute at Virginia Theological Seminary.
The Rev. Lorenzo Lebrija, executive director at TryTank Research, told The Christian Post that the goal of AskCathy was 'to create a bot that could be accessed at any time from anywhere to provide basic answers about The Episcopal Church.'
Except this bot is built using ChatGPT, so I'm not exactly sure that we're going to get the best answers out there ...
Since this is an online resource, I decided I should poke my nose into things to see what sort of spiritual wisdom I could receive from the ChatGPT preacherbot thing.
I tried probing on this last point, but Cathy got stuck in a loop and only had one answer for this question.
To be fair, most mainline pastors would also get stuck in the same loop.
I am inclined to believe that these answers are accurate to the teachings of the Episcopal Church. However, these answers are so morally destructive that it's hard to overstate.
Last year, the Barna Group released the findings of a survey on Christians' opinions of AI, with only 22% of respondents saying that they believed AI was 'good for the Christian Church,' while 51% disagreed and 27% were unsure.
For his part, Lebrija believes that most people using AskCathy see it 'as a tool and in no way a replacement for human interaction,' which 'can augment the work of The [Episcopal] Church.'
'To be clear, AI should never be used in place of people, and that is not the intent of Cathy. Cathy regularly encourages people to seek further, deeper advice from local clergy or spiritual guides,' he said.
I don't know. If AskCathy is anywhere near accurate then I think that talking to anyone at an Episcopal church would also be a mistake.
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