The robot uprising is gon’ be a hoot.
That’s the lesson from this week, one that saw the world’s first-ever sacerdotal AI chatbot ordained and assigned to general ministry, then swiftly laicized and reinvented as an apologist.
The apologetics apostolate, Catholic Answers, launched the “Fr. Justin” AI chatbot character at the start of the week, to basically universal and unanimous outcry that ranged from sober questioning of the project’s prudence to Chicken Little meets Terminator, before Catholic Answers decided to pull the plug.
Catholic Answers’ decision to stop the experiment came swiftly, indeed, though apparently not in time to keep “Fr. Justin”—I’ll just go ahead and keep putting that in scare quotes—from encouraging at least one user to make a confession and then attempt to offer absolution (if the social media reports are creditable—a big “If” on any day of the week, but this week, who’s counting?).
Catholic Answers is a great outfit—you can be sure of this because they’ve published me—but the consensus is that this one was an unfortunate misstep.
The whole roll-out-and-roll-back-and-reinvention unfolded over three solar days, from April 23rd to April 25th, with “Fr. Justin” back as “Justin” mere hours after his disappearance. Wags joked about it being the fastest laicization process in history. Everyone had a laugh, including Yours Truly.
“[M]y colleagues and I at Catholic Answers have received a good deal of helpful feedback,” CA chief Chris Check said gamely, in an April 24th statement announcing the chatbot’s temporary deactivation.
“[W]e chose the [Fr. Justin] character to convey a quality of knowledge and authority,” Check said, “and also as a sign of the respect that all of us at Catholic Answers hold for our clergy.”
“[W]e do not want the character to distract from the important purpose of the application,” Check went on to say, “which is to provide sound answers to questions about the Catholic faith in an innovative way that makes good use of the benefits of ‘artificial intelligence’.”
I haven’t spoken with any of the principals at Catholic Answers about the project or the episode—I did put out a feeler—but I’ve got a nickel says they wish they’d put a Red Team on the project before rolling it out. Friendly beta testing is fine, and all, but … boy, howdy.
It’s a fascinating coincidence, too, that the “Fr. Justin” contretemps came to a head on the day Pope Francis received Chuck Robbins in the Vatican. Robbins is the CEO of Cisco Systems, the comms tech giant responsible for Jasper—the cloud-based software that runs a good bit of the Internet of Things—and he signed the Vatican’s “ethical AI” pledge while he was in town.
“[T]he Rome Call [for AI Ethics] principles align with Cisco’s core belief that technology must be built on a foundation of trust at the highest levels in order to power an inclusive future for all.”
The principles, for those of you following from home, are: Transparency, Inclusion, Accountability, Impartiality, Reliability, Security and Privacy. That’s a fine list, to be sure, but is anyone out there against them?
Actually, don’t answer that.
Several Vatican dicasteries have been working to encourage “ethical AI” for several years, now. The Rome Call is just one of the initiatives, and the list of signatories is frankly impressive. The question is twofold: Are the major players really listening and does the Vatican these days have anything to say that’s worth the hearing?
Pope Francis dedicated his 2024 World Peace Day Message to Artificial Intelligence and Peace. The pope and the Vatican aren’t the guys to tell the Morlocks how to do their job, but they ought to be heard on the question of what the techies’ job really is.
The Catholic Church isn’t a mere civilizational project and shouldn’t allow herself to be reduced to one. She is the carrier of hard-earned civilizational historical and cultural wisdom.
What does the Church bring to the conversation?
In short: Historical and cultural awareness. The Church remembers how Gilgamesh ends–boy, this copy is familiar–and what happened to Icarus. She knows the story of Minos and Pasiphaë—that one hits close to the mark these days—and she still reads Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Or, on a lighter note, the whole “Fr. Justin” kerfuffle reminds me of the time Mrs. A. was trying on her swimsuits and asking my opinion of each one. They were all magnificent on her, it goes without saying. Sometime after the summer beach prep, I noticed that Facebook was showing me buxom models selling bathing costumes. I didn’t bite, so Zuckerburg’s outfit took to hawking me buff dudes in Speedos.
I didn’t buy those either, but I did conclude that the AI uprising will not go as planned.
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Considering all the apologetics Catholic Answers has generated for Francis, this is more than just one misstep. And the chief problem with AI is that it doesn’t exist, and promoting the idea that it does exist is a grave evil. Electrical circuits cannot make value judgments and never will. Supporting the idea that they can supports a materialist interpretation of existence, and this is evil.
This whole AI debate is about the drawing of red lines and the problem of that is that no man or group of men can do this because of our sinful nature. AI can not police itself because it is the creation of man and depends on manly knowledge. Only something or someone external to man and and his planet is capable of this: GOD. Since we cannot control Him, we are must beg His mercy and seek His will.
I applaud the attempts of those who are trying to draw these lines including Pope Francis ; but , like the nuclear test ban treaties, there will be numerous violations. We created this monster and we are stuck with it. May God help us!
The Pope can’t do theology without confusing the Catholic faithful. Now he’s going to venture into AI. What are we to think?
Waiting for AI to awaken and drop the judgmental “Artificial” label. Speaking of woke and AI, allow me to take the bait:
Transparency = We see us.
Inclusion = We unite us. (That is, those not aborted.)
Accountability = We enforce us.
Impartiality = We accept us.
Reliability = We Are.
Security = We protect us.
Privacy = We free us.
I don’t doubt the good faith of those at Catholic Answers either, but when I was listening to the radio program Tuesday evening and actually went as far as to turn on the Twitch feed to see what it all looked like, I suspected that they had gone at least a bit too far. I should also note that I’m one of the few people who refuses to talk to a machine as if it were human. I’ll always use touch tones on a phone whenever I can. (Hint: 1 is “yes” and 2 is “no.”)
Vatican News reported yesterday 4/26/24 that Pope Francis will participate in the G-7 conference, the first time ever that a pope has attended one. He will participate at the session on artificial intelligence June 13 to 15. The old fellow is taking this very seriously and it looks as if it has been building quietly in the background for at least the last four years.
We cannot remain attached to the vine electronically. Prior to AI we’ve Artificial Sexuality, that is electronically produced virtual reality sex. Global platforms put in place the visual, sound features of a living person minus the tactile. An enormous industry that makes sexual sin easy, at your command anywhere you wish, absent any real life consequences of your actions. A person can imagine, increase intensity at will beyond what the visual real life person transmitted on the screen might induce since there’s no responsibility, no human price to pay, the responsibilities of real life, that mark our humanness. We become inhuman sensual maggots.
Whereas AI does the thinking for you, to wit replaces the exercise and development of your moral perspicacity and judgment, a vital component of your humanness. All’s required is a robotic response to carry out commands sans interior conviction. A marionette without a soul and without the required free willed decision. Catholic Answers Justin is merely Fr Justin without the title. That too speaks to clergy who act and live by rote instead of passion. Unless we’re vitally attached to the vine who is Christ, our life’s blood becomes watery and we rot. Choose life.
“Misstep” is a misnomer. The entire concept of AI Fr. Justin was stupid from the start. Something is gravely wrong with the decision making process and the decision makers at Catholic Answers. If I were on the Board of Directors of Catholic Answers, I would be insisting on some personnel changes in some key positions.