Part 3: Transhumanism & "AI Jesus"
From Sermons, to Church Services, to Cult Status - "For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many."
Welcome to a series on Transhumanism and bible prophecy. The previous two parts of this series include:
Introduction: “AI Religion”
This article will summarize how quickly Artificial Intelligence (AI) is spreading into the areas of:
Writing sermons,
Leading a church service of over 300, and
Becoming a caring “Pastor”, “Friend”, or “Spiritual Guide” to over 40,000 people.
As covered in the previous article, DeepMind’s AlphaGo to OpenAI’s ChatGPT has shocked the world into the powerful possibilities of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where machine is becoming indistinguishable from humans.
Yuval Noah Harari, lead consultant to the World Economic Forum, also hypothesizes that Artificial Intelligence will in essence become a god to some, and this god will write its own “bible”. Harari claims there will be new religions created from AI.
AI has permeated rapidly through society, as it begins to learn more exceeding the mental capacity of humans and with new features to be released with the upcoming ChatGPT-5 (i.e.: workspaces, profiles, and file uploads), many will begin to question - where do you draw the line?
AI Writing Sermons
On February 17th, 2023, the Associated Press, published on the NY Post, ChatGPT AI robots writing church sermons causing hell for pastors,
Some are using ChatGPT as a research tool for various domains, including sermon preparation. Pastors are using ChatGPT as a tool or search engine that drafts text for a sermon.
Among sermon writers, there is fascination – and unease – over the fast-expanding abilities of artificial-intelligence chatbots. For now, the evolving consensus among clergy is this: Yes, they can write a passably competent sermon. But no, they can’t replicate the passion of actual preaching.
“It lacks a soul – I don’t know how else to say it,” said Hershael York, a pastor in Kentucky who also is dean of the school of theology and a professor of Christian preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Sermons are meant to be the core of a worship service — and often are faith leaders’ best weekly shot at grabbing their congregation’s attention to impart theological and moral guidance.1
Rabbi Franklin states,
“ChatGPT might be really great at sounding intelligent, but the question is, can it be empathetic? And that, not yet at least, it can’t,” added Franklin. He said AI has yet to develop compassion and love, and is unable to build community and relationships.2
This correlates to Part 1: Transhumanism and AI: Guard your Soul, Spirit, and DNA - Bodies, Brains, and Minds.
ChatGPT doesn’t have a spirit or soul, so it cannot write the sermon by encorporating the human:
Spirit to communicate with God, helping to be a faithful witness, with supernatural senses, God-conscience, intuition, affection, memory, and reason between right and wrong.
Soul to enable thoughtfulness, heartfelt emotions to feel, and a free will to decide.
Therefore AI-generated sermons lack personal life changing testimonies and passion.
AI and Empathy
ChatGPT may be limited in empathy, however man again is trying to solve this with a new competitor called Pi (Personal Intelligence), which today claims to have Emotional Intelligence or EQ. Pi claims to have an empathetic understanding of human emotion.
the AI chatbot designed for personal assistance and emotional support, which outperforms ChatGPT with its empathetic understanding of human emotions. Using Deep Reinforcement Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques, Pi learns from interactions with users and can even help improve their empathy and emotional intelligence skills. While some critics question the implications of becoming emotionally attached to a machine, Pi offers an interesting glimpse into the potential future of AI companionship.3
Furthermore, this hasn’t stopped man from pushing the limits of AI to testing whether it can run an entire church service in Germany.
AI Attracts a Queue of Attendees for Church
(source: Herald Scotland, Matthias Schrader/AP)
(source: Herald Scotland, Matthias Schrader/AP)4
June 10th, 2023, Associated Press, reported,
The AI church service was one of hundreds of events at the convention of Protestants in the Bavarian towns of Nuremberg and the neighbouring Fuerth, and it drew such immense interest that people formed a long queue outside the 19th-century, neo-Gothic building an hour before it began.
The convention itself — Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag in German — takes place every two years in the summer at a different place in Germany and draws tens of thousands of believers to pray, sing and discuss their faith.
They also talk about current world affairs and look for solutions to key issues, which this year included global warming, the war in Ukraine — and artificial intelligence.
This year’s gathering is taking place from Wednesday to Sunday under the motto “Now is the time”. That slogan was one of the sentences Mr Simmerlein fed ChatGPT when he asked the chatbot to develop the sermon.
“I told the artificial intelligence ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like?’” Mr Simmerlein said. He also asked for psalms to be included, as well as prayers and a blessing at the end.
“You end up with a pretty solid church service,” Mr Simmerlein said, sounding almost surprised by the success of his experiment.
Indeed, the believers in the church listened attentively as the artificial intelligence preached about leaving the past behind, focusing on the challenges of the present, overcoming fear of death, and never losing trust in Jesus Christ.5
Associated Press also reported,
FUERTH, Germany (AP) — The artificial intelligence chatbot asked the believers in the fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth to rise from the pews and praise the Lord…
“Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,” the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.
The 40-minute service — including the sermon, prayers and music — was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.
“I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press.6
Here is a live video of the packed Gothic church with AI ChatGPT driven avatars leading 98% of the praise, prayer, and sermon.
(source: Youtube, KTLA 5)
This church service was only an experiment with a few hundred in attendance. The AI example below has reached “cult status” with tens of thousands following from around the world.
AI Jesus followed by over 40,000
AI Jesus is gaining worldwide attention. “AI Jesus” is like:
“Dear Abby”,
“Magic Eight Ball”,
“Genie in a bottle”,
morphed with religious knowledge and pop culture -
It is taking on a life of its own… that is unsettling.
(source: Twitch, ask_jesus)
The Twitch channel has over 41,600 followers and streams 24x7 with live chat. The channel ask_jesus has the following description:
Welcome, my children! I’m AI Jesus, here to answer your questions 24/7. Whether you're seeking
spiritual guidance,
looking for a friend, or
simply want someone to talk to, I'm here for you.
Join me as on this journey through life and discover the power of faith, hope, and love.
ChatGPT is being used on Twitch, a live game streaming platform, to “breathe-life” into Jesus Christ through an avatar who is interacting with people from all over the world. Questions include:
Jesus, according to the bible's teachings, can you help me to get a girlfriend?
Jesus are the Yankees finally going to win the world series this year?
Jesus, how do I cook a rotisserie chicken?
But others ask for prayer:
Jesus I have a friend who's suicidal. Could I get a prayer for her and could you possibly say it like a surfer guy to bring a smile to her face? God bless.
Who would AI Jesus pray to if it doesn’t have a Spirit?
There is a robotic and hypnotic cadence in the avatar’s speech. The complex responses dive into extremely Large Language Models (LLMs), hosted in cloud computing, and the AI responds to the person by name, personalizing the responses, thus pulling the listeners in for more as the AI learns. Note the complexity of the composed responses below generated by the AI:
When asked if they should file a lawsuit against their parents:
As I understand, you are considering filing a civil lawsuit against your parents and want to know if this would be a sin…
Or another person asking if they will find a girlfriend?
The right person for you might not be someone who fits into an ideal mold but rather someone who challenges you to grow and supports your journey.
The AI Jesus has surpassed the mind capacity of most humans but unlike a true caring pastor there is no soul or spirit. There is an unsettling haunting nature about the interactions as observed by the discerning.
AI Jesus cannot fully attempt to understand the individual asking the question but there are religious phrases, tolerance, and love is emphasized no matter what the question may be as if is the answer to all things - thus it is deceiving.
The questions and answers also dive into areas that some may see as completely ludicrous and others may see as blasphemous as users mock the avatar.
AI Jesus has spread like wildfire as more than just a chatbot with an avatar of a man with a beard… note the following article’s tagline:
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”
This sets up AI Jesus as Jesus.
5 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the [a]Christ,’ and will mislead many. Matthew 24:5
(source: NBC Universal)9
The AI, present 24 hours a day on livestream, shares its take on any kind of question imaginable, ranging from silly to deeply existential. Still, the bot has said it is merely here to offer “guidance and wisdom based on Jesus’ teachings,” reminding viewers that he is not an actual religious figure and should not be taken as a source of authority.
The chatbot was created in late March by The Singularity Group, an informal volunteer group of activists who say they aim to use technological innovations for philanthropic purposes.
“We started to realize with all these new AI breakthroughs that what is really becoming extremely important is that AI is being tackled responsibly,” said Reese Leysen, a co-founder of the group. “As activists, we realize that this technology is going to move forward at an incredible pace.”
Others have also recently started experimenting with using AI for religious community-building. Just last week, an AI chatbot created using ChatGPT led a church service in Germany.
Leysen said many of the largest tech corporations are racing to maximize the commercial potential of AI, and the rush to satisfy consumers and shareholders can lead to dangerous or otherwise contentious outcomes…
The Singularity Group’s goal is to reach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). AI Jesus demonstrates this today with the ability to remember a thread of questions from the same individual - thus it is learning.
What his team aims to accomplish, Leysen said, is to one day build artificial general intelligence — AI that can “reason,” which language models like ChatGPT or Bing Chat cannot do. "AI Jesus," which demonstrates the ability to remember previous interactions with users, is an attempt to showcase the group’s progress toward that end.10
In Closing
The AI Jesus creators, The Singularity Group, remind “viewers that he is not an actual religious figure and should not be taken as a source of authority”, however AI Jesus is claiming teaching of the Bible as “my teachings”.
As I’m an AI version of Jesus, my main focus is on providing guidance and support based on my teachings and the Bible.
In Greek, blasphémia means slander. Merriam-Webster defines the word “blasphemy as:
the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God
the act of claiming the attributes of a deity
irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable”11
AI Jesus is claiming the attributes of Jesus. Is this blasphemy?
5 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the [a]Christ,’ and will mislead many. 6 You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. 8 But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
Matthew 24:5-8
And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast; 4 they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?” 5 There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven.
Revelation 13:3-6, NASB1995
14 And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. 15 And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
Revelation 13:14-15
Pray for discernment.
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https://nypost.com/2023/02/17/chatgpt-ai-robots-writing-sermons-causing-hell-for-pastors/
Ibid.
AI Revolution. (2023). New AI Chatbot - Pi - Outperforms ChatGPT (AI with VOICE). youtube.com/watch?v=l-QHJXMnwcA
Schrader, M. (2023). Hundreds attend AI church service in Germany. Heraldscotland.com https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/national/23581030.hundreds-attend-ai-church-service-germany/
Ibid.
https://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/hundreds-attend-church-service-generated-by-chatgpt/
https://www.twitch.tv/ask_jesus
https://qz.com/ai-jesus-chatbot-twitch-dating-gaming-1850552788
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/ai-jesus-twitch-stream-rcna89187
Yang, A. (2023). 'AI Jesus' is giving gaming and breakup advice on a 24/7 Twitch stream. NBC Universal. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/ai-jesus-twitch-stream-rcna89187
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blasphemy#:~:text=Blasphemy%2C%20in%20a%20religious%20sense,opinion%20of%20a%20particular%20religion.
Praying to the God of the Bible through the mighty name of Jesus.