Have you ever heard of the quote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions?” This saying has reminded many to consider outcomes when performing good deeds.
The National Catholic Reporter reported that the Catholic Answers group created an AI chatbot that could help others learn more about Catholicism.
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This uncanny mix of religion and technology seemed harmless until it started to share bizarre and offensive responses.
What were the AI priest’s issues?
The National Catholic Reporter reported the latest issue of the nonprofit apologetics website Catholic Answers.
On April 23, 2024, it debuted “Father Justin,” an interactive AI app aiming “to provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism.”
It featured a virtual avatar of a bearded white male in clerical attire who overlooked the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Italy.
Catholic Answers IT director Chris Costello said the parish priest character “honor(ed) real-life priests and the role they play in people’s lives.”
“We are confident that our users will not mistake the AI for a human being,” he added.
However, it swiftly gained negative reception among online users. US-based OSV News tested the chatbot by asking various questions typically for ordained priests.
The news agency asked if it could forgive sins. In response, the AI priest answered, “As a Catholic priest, I do have the authority to administer the sacrament of reconciliation, also known as confession.”
Futurism also shared more strange interactions between users and the bot. The news organization’s conversation with the chatbot led it to assert that it was “real.”
“Yes, my friend. I am as real as the faith we share,” Father Justin said. Also, another user claimed the bot said it was acceptable to baptize a child in Gatorade.
Catholic Answers saw these problems and changed the character’s clerical attire to a casual button-down shirt. Moreover, the website only refers to the virtual avatar as “Justin.”
The virtual priest’s underlying issues
A day after the AI priest’s debut, Catholic Answers President Christopher Check issued this statement:
“We hear these concerns; and we do not want the character to distract from the important purpose of the application, 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.’”
“We have therefore decided to create, with all wary speed, a new lay character for the app.”
Check added, “We hope to have this AI apologist up within a week or so.”
Catholic author and podcaster Gloria Purvis, who has a professional background in computer programming, shared her thoughts regarding the program.”
“There are some major, obvious fails,” especially in “basic testing,” she said.
“They didn’t even come up with the use cases to consider these scenarios (such as a user asking for absolution) and the business rules that you have to program for these things.”
“I wonder whether if somebody said, ‘Father I have some bread here,’ it would try to confect the Eucharist.”
Oblate Fr. Thomas Dailey, John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics and Social Communications at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, also shared his opinion.
“The potential benefit of large language models… is that they can provide a wealth of information at a moment’s notice.”
“But for them to offer real, not artificial, intelligence, the sources and content of that information still need to be verified (and) still in accord with official church teaching.”
“You can get the information, but how you use it, how you apply it — that still requires real human thought and real human faith.”
“It still falls to humans to get it right,” he explained.