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The world of artificial intelligence is expanding exponentially.

AIs infancy dates from the 1950s and 1960s, but it is now like an adolescent experiencing a sudden growth burst. ChatBPT and its siblings in the AI family are the rage in business, health care, education, and more.

How can chatbots help religious leaders? I have used ChatBPT to help me find facts and sources. I drew upon ChatBPT and traditional sources to research this article. As a research assistant, however, it is helpful only to a point. Sometimes AI can make errors. Some chatbots even invent material.

Artificial intelligence is in its adolescence, soaking up billions of data from sermons, blogs, online chats, news reports, jokes, poetry, fiction, and heaven knows what else. It is looking for patterns and connections.

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Last December, Rabbi Josh Franklin in New York developed writer's block. Every preacher has been there. Instead of using someone elses sermon from the internet, he decided to experiment with ChatGPT. He asked it to write a sermon. Seconds later, there was a sermon. The result was a bit pedantic but not bad. As an experiment, he preached it on Sabbath, then told his congregation that he hadnt written it. He asked them who they thought he had written it. No one guessed AI.

Surprise, a machine had produced the sermon, not a rabbi.

Is this the future of preaching?

I did not think I could be shocked, but this report stopped me in my tracks. When several hundred Lutherans in Bavaria, Germany, attended a service on June 9 designed by ChatGPT, the program not only selected hymns and prayers, but also composed and delivered a sermon, delivered by an avatar on a big screen. (Joanne M. Pierce College of the Holy Cross in The Conversation)

Thats just the tip of the AI iceberg. Using the new artificial intelligence learning tool Khanmigo, students have interviewed historical figures, including Harriet Tubman, Abigail Adams, Genghis Khan, Montezuma, and Winston Churchill. Khanmigo is still in beta testing at this point. But what lies ahead? Will Sunday school teachers be able to ask students: What do you want to ask Jesus or Moses today? (There is a much better way to find out what they have said, and I suspect you know it if you are reading this article.)

I downloaded the Khanmigo software to try it myself. I didnt find Jesus or Moses to interview, but I did ask Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Christians. The AI Ghandi replied: I once said, I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

This statement reflects my belief that while the teachings of Christ were profound and inspiring, not all who identified as Christians lived up to these teachings. However, I always advocated for understanding and respect among all religions. The quote is accurate, followed by a summary of aggregated material on the internet about Ghandi.

The artificial intelligence smartphone app ChatGPT on June 6.

ChatGPTis a good research tool. It saves a lot of time. No Google searches. Sorry, Wikipedia, but our love affair is over. No rummaging through my library for books and articles. No listening to podcasts for hours to find the one interview that would answer my questions. All I had to do is ask ChatGPT or one of its AI siblings. Then I fact-check because AI can be a friend or a foe when it comes to accuracy.

I hear a lot of worries about AI taking over the world and enslaving us. People may be seeing too many "Terminator" movies. We are not the first people to fret about technological innovation and the changes it brings. Think about those scribes in the first century who had to adjust from unrolling scrolls to turning pages in a codex. Or monks who watched manuscript production die out with the advent of movable type and the printing press.

In my own lifetime, I have moved from a Smith Corona typewriter to a Microsoft Surface. I do confess that my smartphone may be smarter than me. I used to have a personal library of several thousand books, but now I buy books and carry them on my Kindle or listen to them on Audible. AI is as big and powerful as any of these technological developments in the past.

What will fully mature AI look like?

I dont know, but I can tell you it will change the way we do church.

In every generation, there are Luddites who fear innovation. But you cant stop the future. Like most change, however, there is a dark side to innovation. For preachers, it is all too easy to use ChatGBT to write last-minute sermons (known as Saturday night specials").

Sorry, but thats just high-tech plagiarism unless you admit it. Pastors using AI to prepare Bible or theology classes need to realize AI is not a magic wand. It sometimes makes mistakes.

One theologian asked it to name the 10 greatest religious thinkers of the 20th century. It included John Calvin, a 16th-century reformer. Oops. AI can be biased too. Historial-critical interpreters of the Bible will notice that as ChatGBT indiscriminately gobbles up information from the internet, it sometimes offers a fundamentalist bias when asked a question about the Scriptures. Thats because Biblical literalists dominate the internet, and thats the food source for AIs theological knowledge.

From my point of view, AI can make clergy more productive. But for producing sermons or preparing spiritual resources, it is limited because it is machine-generated intelligence.

What gives a good sermon or presentation that essential spiritual component comes from praying and wrestling with the text in light of personal experience in the context of a congregation's life. Whats missing with AI? Jews call it nefesh. Christians generally call it soul.

Joanne Pierce, quoted earlier, puts it this way: chatbots cannot know what it means to be human, to experience love or be inspired by a sacred text.

It can aggregate material about human feelings and mimic them, but at the end of the day, artificial intelligence is just that: artificial.

The Very Rev. Stephen Brehe is the retired dean of St. Peters Episcopal Cathedral in Helena. He is now serving as the interim dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Reno, NV.

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Will artificial intelligence change the way we do church - Independent Record