On Monday, September 11, 2023 at 10:59:40 PM UTC-7, Technobarbarian wrote:
"Watch out! The AI “clones” of politicians are coming. And they’re not half bad.
In June, the AI avatars of Joe Biden and Donald Trump engaged in a marathon session of profane trash-talking broadcast on Twitch, offering a surreal glimpse at one potential future of political debate. Then a super PAC supporting the (since-scuttled)
presidential bid of Miami’s mayor launched an AI Francis Suarez bot to answer voters’ questions, which offered a more polished vision of a politician’s avatar.
Now a project called Chat2024 has soft-launched a much broader multi-candidate platform — a slick, Silicon Valley venture-backed version of what has so far just been a set of lighthearted experiments.
On Wednesday, the project will officially unveil the AI-powered avatars of 17 leading presidential candidates. Each one is a chatbot trained on reams of data generated from at least a hundred sources, like candidates’ video appearances and writings.
Users can query the bots individually, ask the same question of all 17 at once, or set any two of them against each other in one-on-one debates directed by user input."
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/11/2024-candidate-bots-ai-00115056
I love it. I assume the loons can also chat with Jesus. If not I'm sure there will be several versions soon. Muhamed might be a problem.
So, I got to thinking about it and I had to google it. If you're going to discuss religion with a computer, why settle for #2? I decided to go for the head guy. And sur-nuf. We gotta' app for that. My instant favorite was God in a Box. But that
wasn't even close to spooky until I got to the next two links.
https://www.google.com/search?q=god+chatbot&rlz=1C1FKPE_enUS931US931&oq=god+chatbot&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2j0i390i650l5.16438j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
"The Kodaiji Temple, a place of worship for Zen Buddhists, is nestled in a quaint ward in Kyoto, Japan. To get to it, pilgrims and visitors need to traverse a bamboo grove and a Japanese garden to arrive at the spot where it has been standing for more
than 400 years. The temple welcomes worshippers from the world over—with many drawn to its enigmatic priest.
Mindar is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 132 pounds, and has been preaching at the historic temple since 2019. The priest is well-versed in the Heart Sutra, a popular and sacred mantra in Buddhism, and can often be found in the temple sermonizing it for
pilgrims. But Mindar is no ordinary preacher. Actuators whirr as its aluminum arms wave. Mindar’s face, made of a pale silicone, contorts uncannily as it recites the Heart Sutra. A close look into the eyes reveals the aperture of a camera gazing out at
the visitors who have come to pray.
Mindar is a humanoid robot engineered by a team at Osaka University as the embodiment of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and a bodhisattva. It’s designed to bridge the gap between traditional religious practices with the modern world, marrying
emerging technologies like AI and robotics with centuries-old spiritualism.
“It has a very basic response AI,” Beth Singler, a digital anthropologist and assistant professor in digital religion (yes, really) at the University of Zurich, told The Daily Beast. “Basically, if there’s someone in the room, then it will recite
The Heart Sutra.”
Singler notes that Mindar isn’t the only AI-powered priestbot out there. In fact, these types of robo-deities have cropped up a lot in recent years: There’s Germany’s BlessU-2 robot with glowing hands that “bless” you; engineer and model Lior
Cole built a Robo Rabbi that give you personalized spiritual guidance based on your birthday; the Church of England operates an official smart speaker app that allows your Amazon Alexa to recite the Lord’s Prayer or grace before eating.
This infusion of religion and technology is nothing new. Despite stereotypes of being stubborn and slow to change (which is certainly true in some regards), many religions are willing to embrace new technologies in order to support their practices,
traditions, and evangelism. Zooming in to a sermon or service is run-of-the-mill. There’s also a plethora of apps that facilitate prayer and worship for a number of different religions.
However, the sudden emergence and subsequent growth of AI in the past few years is taking the marriage of religion and tech to a whole new level."
[snip]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-radical-movement-to-worship-ai-chatbots-like-chatgpt-as-gods
"Christian creators build chatbots with ‘biblical’ worldview
The chatbots have spurred excitement among Christians while forcing their leaders to reckon with the technology"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/07/21/christians-chatbots-biblical-worldview/
A chatbot willing to take on questions of all kinds – from the serious to the comical – is the latest representation of Jesus for the AI age
https://theconversation.com/a-chatbot-willing-to-take-on-questions-of-all-kinds-from-the-serious-to-the-comical-is-the-latest-representation-of-jesus-for-the-ai-age-208644
I threw that last one in just in case anyone wanted to talk to Jesus, which sort of seems like talking to the janitor instead of the CEO. If you like, some of the programs will let you create your own God and talk to that. It's perfect, Now you can
navel gaze with the aid of a machine. This obviously has Scientology beat all to hell. Obvious pun intended.
TB
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