Deus in Machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus
"Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus." By Ashifa Kassam. The Guardian 21 November 2024. As of late November, on line here.[1]
Log line: "Peter’s chapel in Lucerne swaps out its priest to set up a computer and cables in confessional booth".
From article:
The small, unadorned church has long ranked as the oldest in the Swiss city of Lucerne. But Peter’s chapel has become synonymous with all that is new after it installed an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of dialoguing in 100 different languages.
“It was really an experiment,” said Marco Schmid, a theologian with the church. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would they talk with him about? Would there be interest in talking to him? We’re probably pioneers in this.”
The installation, known as Deus in Machina, was launched in August [2024] as the latest initiative in a years-long collaboration with a local university research lab on immersive reality.
After projects that had experimented with virtual and augmented reality, the church decided that the next step was to install an avatar. Schmid said: “We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be – a theologian, a person or a saint? But then we realised the best figure would be Jesus himself.”
The AI does not hear Confession nor grant Absolution ....
"Deus in Machina" means "God in the Machine" playing on "Deus ex Machina," for the "god from the machine," literally, in ancient Greek drama, figuratively and relevantly in such works as these cited in the Clockworks2 wiki.[2] The phrase also plays on "a classic insult to the view of the mind-body dualism in the thought of René Descartes."[3] For a variety of cybernetic oracle and god-ruler, see Vaal in the classic Star Trek episode "The Apple", and note the title and concept in the first volume in the series by Thomas Dunn and Richard Erlich working up to this wiki, The Mechanical God.
RDE, with thanks to Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, 21Nov24
