Parenting Tip

from The Culture Translator by axis.org

June 23, 2023

Personal Jesus

What it is: Twitch stream ask_jesus offers an AI-generated version of Jesus, providing a 24/7 Q&A for gamers, spiritual wayfarers, and unfortunately, online trolls.

Why it's so unnerving: The live stream depicts Jesus as a bearded White man, eyes looking off into the distance while its mouth moves in a pantomime of the words coming from its disembodied voice. The nonreligious tech nonprofit that funds the stream claims that the bot has been “trained” using the teachings of Jesus, and its stated purpose is to offer “spiritual guidance” and invite users on the journey of “faith, hope, and love.” No matter what users ask the bot, a connection—however tenuous—to the teachings of love and compassion is present in the answer. Some users approach the stream sincerely, asking for prayer or for insight on interpreting the Bible. But for the most part, those asking questions seem to be using the stream for entertainment in a way that many Christians may find disrespectful.

Start the conversation: If you had the chance to ask the real Jesus a question, what would you ask?

In the movie Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Malcolm has a prescient line about the morality of bringing dinosaurs back to life: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." Perhaps this same line of logic should be (or should have been) applied to the creation of AI Jesus.

Consider for a moment where we are: there is now a piece of artificial intelligence, available to interact with human beings 24/7, which in some ways claims to speak for God. Sometimes this AI directly refers to itself as Jesus. Other times, like when one user asked if it was the False Christ, says things like, "It's important to recognize that I am not the real Jesus, but an AI inspired by His teachings, to serve and assist."

Reese Leysen is a co-founder of The Singularity Group, which created AI Jesus. Leysen says that his organization's goal is to help create AI that can “reason.” The creation of AI Jesus gave the group a chance to demonstrate their progress toward this goal, given that this AI can remember previous interactions with users. In other words, to The Singularity Group, this project was basically just a means to the end of showing off their technical abilities.

We encourage parents and caring adults to have intentional conversations about the trustworthiness of AI responses, particularly around moral, spiritual, and relational issues. Whether the conversation is with ask_jesus, ChatGPT, or My AI on Snapchat, ethics and morality stem naturally from worldview, and we don't understand what kind of worldview these things have. AI and the scientists who create them are also still learning, and the tech can misinterpret important cues in conversation. This sort of artificial intelligence technology has the potential to fundamentally alter the fabric of reality, and it deserves serious attention.

Here are some questions to spark conversation about it:

Have you ever asked an AI a question about morality, faith, or relationships? If so, how did it respond?
If an AI gave you advice, how likely would you be to trust it? Why?
Have you ever had an interaction with AI where it encouraged or normalized something that seemed wrong?