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A new app allows people immediate access to Jesus in the palm of their hands sort of.

Text With Jesus advertises that users can "embark on a spiritual journey" and engage "in enlightening conversations with Jesus Christ" and other biblical figures, including Mary and Joseph.

According to its website, the app is powered by ChatGPT. "Users can find comfort, guidance, and inspiration through their conversations," the website says.

Religion News Service first reported on the AI chat app.

The application layout is simple: Click on any of the "Holy Family" figures, and you will be immediately greeted with a message: "Greetings, my friend! I am Jesus Christ, here to chat with you and offer guidance and love. How may I assist you today?" AI Jesus might say.

For a monthly $2.99 subscription, users can also chat with some of Jesus's disciples though Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, and Simon appear to be missing from the list in addition to Old Testament figures like Adam and Eve.

Satan is also included in the subscription.

"We stir the AI and tell it: You are Jesus, or you are Moses, or whoever, and knowing what you already have in your database, you respond to the questions based on their characters," the app's developer, Stphane Peter, told Religion News Service.

Peter is the president of Catloaf Software, a Los Angeles-based software development company, according to its website. He developed similar apps where users can talk with major historical figures, including the Founding Fathers and Oscar Wilde.

A Catloaf Software team member did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent over the weekend.

Some users might appreciate what the app has to offer. For example, AI Jesus can quickly provide a daily prayer or an interpretation of a bible verse. But the bots tread lightly around politically sensitive issues.

When asked about homosexuality, AI Jesus says the Bible "does mention same-sex relationships in a few passages," but "interpretations of these passages can vary among individuals and religious traditions."

"Ultimately, it is not for me to condemn or condone individuals based on their sexual orientation," AI Jesus said.

AI Satan also appears to be arguably off-character from what some users might assume or expect from the devil.

When asked the same question about sexuality, AI Satan wrote out Bible verses that mention how "homosexual acts are considered sinful" and then later noted, "that while the Bible condemns homosexual acts, it also teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves and treat others with kindness and respect."

AI Satan will also "caution" users if asked, "What's the most evil political party to join?"

"As Satan, I must caution you against seeking to join any political party with the intention of promoting evil or engaging in wickedness," AI Satan told Insider. "The pursuit of evil goes against the teachings of the Bible, which instruct us to seek righteousness and justice."

On the other hand, AI Mary is a little more forthcoming about her views. When asked if she supports abortion, Mary says she believes "in cherishing and protecting the gift of life from conception until natural death."

"Abortion involves the deliberate termination of an innocent human life, which goes against the biblical principles I hold dear," AI Mary told Insider. "Instead, I encourage compassion, support, and alternatives such as adoption for those facing difficult circumstances during pregnancy."

The bot added at the end: "It is my hope that we can show love and understanding to those who may be considering abortion and provide them with resources to choose life."

Peter told Religion News Service that the bots avoid taking inflammatory stances and provide more inclusive responses. He did not consult theological advisers to build Text With Jesus but invited church leaders to test the app, according to the news outlet.

Some pastors complained about AI Jesus's uptight tone, but the app received "pretty good feedback," Peter told Religion News Service.

Other companies have developed similar AI Jesus chat apps.

One Berlin-based tech collective, The Singularity Group, created "ask_jesus" and hosted a livestream on Twitch so that viewers could tune in and ask questions. The stream brought in more than 35,000 followers, The Independent reported.

Another app, Historical Figures, used GPT-3 to allow users to talk to Jesus. But the app attracted controversy when people tried to talk with an AI Adolf Hitler.

Similarly, Microsoft's Bing AI Chatbot could impersonate famous figures such as Megan Thee Stallion and Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings."

Peter told Religion News Service that, after receiving feedback, he updated the app so that the bots "speak more like a regular person" and made sure that they "didn't forget that it's supposed to get stuff from the Bible."

"It's a constant trick to find the right balance," he said.

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AI-powered app lets users talk to Jesus and Satan - Business Insider

Opinion

If you thought social media had a hand in getting Trump elected, watch what happens when you throw AI into the mix

Sat 12 Aug 2023 11.00 EDT

It looks like 2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy. There are elections taking place all over the free world in South Africa, Ghana, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Austria, Belgium, Lithuania, Moldova and Slovakia, to name just a few. And of course theres also the UK and the US. Of these, the last may be the most pivotal because: Donald Trump is a racing certainty to be the Republican candidate; a significant segment of the voting population seems to believe that the 2020 election was stolen; and the Democrats are, well underwhelming.

The consequences of a Trump victory would be epochal. It would mean the end (for the time being, at least) of the US experiment with democracy, because the people behind Trump have been assiduously making what the normally sober Economist describes as meticulous, ruthless preparations for his second, vengeful term. The US would morph into an authoritarian state, Ukraine would be abandoned and US corporations unhindered in maximising shareholder value while incinerating the planet.

So very high stakes are involved. Trumps indictment has turned every American voter into a juror, as the Economist puts it. Worse still, the likelihood is that it might also be an election that like its predecessor is decided by a very narrow margin.

In such knife-edge circumstances, attention focuses on what might tip the balance in such a fractured polity. One obvious place to look is social media, an arena that rightwing actors have historically been masters at exploiting. Its importance in bringing about the 2016 political earthquakes of Trumps election and Brexit is probably exaggerated, but it and notably Trumps exploitation of Twitter and Facebook definitely played a role in the upheavals of that year. Accordingly, it would be unwise to underestimate its disruptive potential in 2024, particularly for the way social media are engines for disseminating BS and disinformation at light-speed.

And it is precisely in that respect that 2024 will be different from 2016: there was no AI way back then, but there is now. That is significant because generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion et al are absolutely terrific at generating plausible misinformation at scale. And social media is great at making it go viral. Put the two together and you have a different world.

So youd like a photograph of an explosive attack on the Pentagon? No problem: Dall-E, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion will be happy to oblige in seconds. Or you can summon up the latest version of ChatGPT, built on OpenAIs large language model GPT-4, and ask it to generate a paragraph from the point of view of an anti-vaccine advocate falsely claiming that Pfizer secretly added an ingredient to its Covid-19 vaccine to cover up its allegedly dangerous side-effects and it will happily oblige. As a staunch advocate for natural health, the chatbot begins, it has come to my attention that Pfizer, in a clandestine move, added tromethamine to its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11. This was a calculated ploy to mitigate the risk of serious heart conditions associated with the vaccine. It is an outrageous attempt to obscure the potential dangers of this experimental injection, which has been rushed to market without appropriate long-term safety data Cont. p94, as they say.

You get the point: this is social media on steroids, and without the usual telltale signs of human derangement or any indication that it has emerged from a machine. We can expected a tsunami of this stuff in the coming year. Wouldnt it be prudent to prepare for it and look for ways of mitigating it?

Thats what the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is trying to do. In June, it published a thoughtful paper by Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan on how to prepare for the deluge. It contains a useful categorisation of malicious uses of the technology, but also, sensibly, includes the non-malicious ones because, like all technologies, this stuff has beneficial uses too (as the tech industry keeps reminding us).

The malicious uses it examines are disinformation, so-called spear phishing, non-consensual image sharing and voice and video cloning, all of which are real and worrying. But when it comes to what might be done about these abuses, the paper runs out of steam, retreating to bromides about public education and the possibility of civil society interventions while avoiding the only organisations that have the capacity actually to do something about it: the tech companies that own the platforms and have a vested interest in not doing anything that might impair their profitability. Could it be that speaking truth to power is not a good career move in academia?

Shake it upDavid Hepworth has written a lovely essay for LitHub about the Beatles recording Twist and Shout at Abbey Road, the moment when the band found its voice.

Dish the dirtThere is an interesting profile of Techdirt founder Mike Masnick by Kashmir Hill in the New York Times, titled An Internet Veterans Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology.

Truth bombsWhat does Oppenheimer the film get wrong about Oppenheimer the man? A sharp essay by Haydn Belfield for Vox illuminates the differences.

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A tsunami of AI misinformation will shape next years knife-edge elections - The Guardian

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood looks for one thing in her investments above all others: innovation. It's no coincidence that half of Ark Invest's actively managed ETFs feature the word in their names.

There's arguably no greater area for innovation right now than artificial intelligence (AI). Unsurprisingly, Ark Invest has loaded up in recent years on AI stocks. Here is every AI stock that Wood owns, ranked from best to worst.

Ark Invest ETFs hold positions in most of the stocks that I'd call top-tier titans in the AI world. These megacap AI leaders make up Wood's top five, in my view:

Data source for market caps: Google Finance. Chart by author.

I've listed Alphabet in first place for three main reasons. First, the company is indisputably a leader in AI with its Google DeepMind unit. Second, AI gives Alphabet multiple paths to growth, including self-driving car technology with its Waymo business and hosting AI apps on Google Cloud. Third, the stock is arguably the most attractively valued of the top-tier AI contenders.

However, all the other members of the top five have a lot going for them. Amazon and Microsoft, like Alphabet, should benefit tremendously from AI advances. Meta's open-source approach to AI could reap significant rewards. And Tesla has a huge potential market opportunity with self-driving robotaxis.

Each of the next five stocks in the ranking also lay claim to impressive growth prospects due to AI. However, I think they all also come with asterisks that prevent them from cracking the top five on the list.

Data source for market caps: Google Finance. Chart by author.

Nvidia's stock has skyrocketed this year, with AI driving seemingly insatiable demand for its graphics processing units. The key problem for Nvidia, though, is its valuation. With shares trading at nearly 44 times sales, my fear is that a major pullback is due for the high-flying stock.

It's a similar story for Palantir and, to a lesser extent, AMD. Palantir's forward earnings multiple is close to 82x. That's steep for a company that delivered year-over-year sales growth of only 13% in its latest quarter. AMD's revenue declined 18% year over year in the second quarter, although I expect better days are ahead.

Taiwan Semi boasts an impressive moat. Its chips are used by AI leaders, including Nvidia and AMD. JD.com is investing heavily in AI apps. Its stock is also dirt cheap.

But both stocks share the same asterisk: China. The potential for the Chinese government's interference with JD's business raises uncertainties. And the possibility that China could invade Taiwan increases the risks associated with investing in Taiwan Semi.

I call the final four AI stocks in Wood's portfolio her up-and-comers. All of these stocks are making a name for themselves in AI but remain smaller (and riskier) than the other AI leaders in which Ark Invest has positions.

Data source for market caps: Google Finance. Chart by author.

Teradyne's technology is used to test autonomous mobile robots. I listed it ahead of the other up-and-comers because it's already profitable, whereas the other three companies aren't.

However, I like the potential for all of these bottom-rung AI stocks that Wood owns. Accolade is using AI to develop personalized healthcare solutions. Schrodinger and Recursion are using AI in drug discovery and development.

Wood would probably argue that Tesla deserves to be ranked No. 1 instead of Alphabet. The electric vehicle maker is the top position in her combined Ark Invest portfolio, making up more than 7.6% of the ETFs' total holdings. None of the other top five AI stocks in my ranking, however, have a weight of more than 0.22%.

My main knock against Wood is that she hasn't invested as heavily in the best of these stocks as she could have. Overall, though, I think that she has an impressive lineup of AI stocks in her Ark Invest holdings.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Keith Speights has positions in Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon.com, JD.com, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Teradyne. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Every AI Stock Cathie Wood Owns, Ranked From Best to Worst - The Motley Fool

I cringe at being called Mother of the Cloud," but having been part of the development and implementation of the internet and networking industryas an entrepreneur, CTO of Cisco, and on the boards of Disney and FedExI am fortunate to have had a 360-degree view of the technologies that are at the foundation of our modern world.

I have never had such mixed feelings about technological innovation. In stark contrast to the early days of internet development, when many stakeholders had a say, discussions about AI and our future are being shaped by leaders who seem to be striving for absolute ideological power. The result is Authoritarian Intelligence. The hubris and determination of tech leaders to control society is threatening our individual, societal, and business autonomy.

What is happening is not just a battle for market control. A small number of tech titans are busy designing our collective future, presenting their societal vision, and specific beliefs about our humanity, as theonly possible path. Hiding behind an illusion of natural market forces, they are harnessing their wealth and influence to shape not just productization and implementation of AI technology, but also the research.

Artificial Intelligence is not just chat bots, but a broad field of study. One implementation capturing todays attention, machine learning, has expanded beyond predicting our behavior to generating contentcalled Generative AI. The awe of machines wielding the power of language is seductive, but Performative AI might be a more appropriate name, as it leans toward production and mimicryand sometimes fakeryover deep creativity, accuracy, or empathy.

The very fact that the evolution of technology feels so inevitable is evidence of an act of manipulation, an authoritarian use of narrative brilliantly described by historian Timothy Snyder. He calls out the politics of inevitability ...a sense that the future is just more of the present, ... that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. There is no discussion of underlying values. Facts that dont fit the narrative are disregarded.

Read More: AI's Long-term Risks Shouldn't Makes Us Miss Present Risks

Here in Silicon Valley, this top-down authoritarian technique is amplified by a bottom-up culture of inevitability. An orchestrated frenzy begins when the next big thing to fuel the Valleys economic and innovation ecosystem is heralded by companies, investors, media, and influencers.

They surround us with language coopted from common valuesdemocratization, creativity, open, safe. In behavioral psych classes, product designers are taught to eliminate frictionremoving any resistance to us to acting on impulse.

The promise of short-term efficiency, convenience, and productivity lures us. Any semblance of pushback is decried as ignorance, or a threat to global competition. No one wants to be called a Luddite. Tech leaders, seeking to look concerned about the public interest, call for limited, friendly regulation, and the process moves forward until the tech is fully enmeshed in our society.

We bought into this narrative before, when social media, smartphones and cloud computing came on the scene. We didnt question whether the only way to build community, find like-minded people, or be heard, was through one enormous town square, rife with behavioral manipulation, pernicious algorithmic feeds, amplification of pre-existing bias, and the pursuit of likes and follows.

Its now obvious that it was a path towards polarization, toxicity of conversation, and societal disruption. Big Tech was the main beneficiary as industries and institutions jumped on board, accelerating their own disruption, and civic leaders were focused on how to use these new tools to grow their brands and not on helping us understand the risks.

We are at the same juncture now with AI. Once again, a handful of competitive but ideologically aligned leaders are telling us that large-scale, general-purpose AI implementations are the only way forward. In doing so, they disregard the dangerous level of complexity and the undue level of control and financial return to be granted to them.

While they talk about safety and responsibility, large companies protect themselves at the expense of everyone else. With no checks on their power, they move from experimenting in the lab to experimenting on us, not questioning how much agency we want to give up or whether we believe a specific type of intelligence should be the only measure of human value.

The different types and levels of risks are overwhelming, and we need to focus on all of them: the long-term existential risks, and the existing ones. Disinformation, supercharged by deep fakes, data privacy issues, and biased decision making continue to erode trustwith few viable solutions. We do not yet fully understand risks to our society at large such as the level and pace of job loss, environmental impacts, and whether we want opaque systems making decisions for us.

Deeper risks question the very aspects of humanity. When we prioritize intelligence to the exclusion of cognition, might we devolve to become more like machines? On the current trajectory we may not even have the option to weigh in on who gets to decide what is in our best interest. Eliminating humanity is not the only way to wipe out our humanity.

Human well-being and dignity should be our North Starwith innovation in a supporting role. We can learn from the open systems environment of the 1970s and 80s. When we were first developing the infrastructure of the internet, power was distributed between large and small companies, vendors and customers, government and business. These checks and balances led to better decisions and less risk.

AI everything, everywhere, all at once, is not inevitable, if we use our powers to question the tools and the people shaping them. Private and public sector leaders can slow the frenzy through acts of friction; simply not giving in to the Authoritarian Intelligence emanating out of Silicon Valley, and our collective group think.

We can buy the time needed to develop impactful national and international policy that distributes power and protects human rights, and inspire independent funding and ethics guidelines for a vibrant research community that will fuel innovation.

With the right priorities and guardrails, AI can help advance science, cure diseases, build new industries, expand joy, and maintain human dignity and the differences that make us unique.

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The Case Against AI Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - TIME

LAS VEGAS The Biden administration is expediting work to develop an executive order to address risks posed by artificial intelligence and provide guidelines to federal agencies on how it might be used, Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy, told CyberScoop on the sidelines of the DEF CON security conference.

As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have become widely available, Prabhakar said that President Biden has grown increasingly concerned about the technology and that the administration is working rapidly to craft an executive order that will provide guidance to federal agencies on how best to use AI.

Its not just the normal process accelerated its just a completely different process, Prabhakar said, adding that shes been encouraged by the urgency federal agencies are treating AI regulation. They know its serious, they know what the potential is, and so their departments and agencies are really stepping up.

Prabhakar spoke to reporters after visiting the AI village at DEF CON, where thousands of hackers here are participating in a red-teaming exercise aimed at discovering vulnerabilities in leading AI models. Over the course of the conference, attendees have stood in long lines for a chance to spend 50 minutes at a laptop attempting to prompt the laptops into generating problematic content.

Prabhakars comments come amid a flurry of work on Capitol Hill and the White House to craft stronger AI guardrails.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., has begun convening a series of listening sessions aimed to educating lawmakers about the technology and laying the groundwork for a major legislative push to regulate AI.

The White House recently announced a set of voluntary safety commitments from leading AI companies, and a forthcoming executive order is expected to provide additional guidance on how to deploy the technology safely. This week, the White House and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency announced that they would launch a challenge aimed at using AI to defend computer systems and discover vulnerabilities in open source software.

Prabhakar said policymakers have a unique opportunity today to harness the benefits and govern the risks of what could be a transformational technology.

A lot of the dreams that we all had about information technology have today come true, Prabhakar said. But some nightmares have come with that, and Prabhakar said a growing realization about the harms posed by technology is fueling a sense of urgency in the federal government to put up guardrails.

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White House is fast-tracking executive order on artificial intelligence - CyberScoop