From the Department of You Can't Make This Stuff Up....

[older]

Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/21/deus-in-machina-swiss-church-installs-ai-powered-jesus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Hey, there is nothing like having a personal relationship with a virtual Jesus!!

[Casualfanboy16]

54 minutes ago, older said:

Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/21/deus-in-machina-swiss-church-installs-ai-powered-jesus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I have a lot of (mostly negative) opinions on the rise of AI, but this is a whole new level of insane. I know they mentioned in the article it was an experimental thing and wasn't gonna go , but they kinda gave the impression that more could be made from this. The way I see it, if I were a religious person, I would absolutely hate this. Not having a real person to discuss stuff with would be a drag. Part of religion's appeal does lie in human connection. Talking to an AI Jesus to get answers to theological questions and random inspirational stuff just feels like a waste. If this goes anywhere, I don't see it bringing anything good to the table due to it putting some people out of preaching jobs. Not that I really care much for preaching the word of God, but this is just kinda terrible idea all around if this somehow develops any further.

[Casualfanboy16]

2 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Hwy, there is nothing like having a personal relationship with a virtual Jesus!!

Imagine you're like trying to confess your sins to Virtual Jesus and he crashes or has a software update or something lol

[freshstart]

I don't know. I think y'all might underestimate the inability of many people to be able to connect with live humans. As a college prof teaching in a profession that requires human contact (nursing), the level of discomfort and inability of college students to meaningfully connect with another human (especially a stranger) is . . . astounding. I have to dedicate lecture time to explaining how to do this and I have to model it in clinical scenarios. Young adults are way more comfortable communicating in virtual format than reality. But that is obviously my personal, (and likely skewed) perspective.

[Dsred19]

As another college prof I concur. Even my own kid would rather text or email than physically talk to her teachers about something. I make her do it anyway. 
When you don’t even have to contact a single human to order food if you don’t want to, that skill will be lost like any other.

[AnonSan]

I grew up in the decade which my childhood still had every child on the neighborhood played outside together outside of school grounds. Despite the emerging tech during that time, we were able to balance between going outside and playing with videogames. I noticed that it was a lot more manageable back then when tech companies were barely starting out. However, when FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) emerged into IT giants, their rapid advances drastically changed the social, in-person connections, for better and for worse. Without the internet, I would still be stuck in the Christian cult and not have this support group. There are a lot of resources on the internet, though I do admit that sometimes too much information on the internet can cause a lot of confusion that critical thinking and deduction skills are now more important than ever. On one hand, tech advances makes life a bit more convenient for many households and searching for resources beyond the physical community, but the other hand driven up the cost of living, intensified the rat-race, and diminished genuine, healthy in-person connections. 

 

The struggle in balancing between tech use (screen time) vs. in-person connections will continue to widen as more industries and people depend on AI. I found AI useful for efficiency in technical work and basic fact checking, but is too easy to overly depend on it when advising about unique dilemmas that go beyond the generic, apathetic census of a bot... Imagine using AI as a judge in court to interpret the law, void of human empathy, to make life-changing rulings.

 

Having an AI Jesus, whether you believe he exists or not, I feel, is pretty insulting that the church thinks they can interpret who he as a symbolic figure (not pertaining to extremist, fundamentalistic beliefs) when the overall Christian institution fails upholding very basic and universal morals and ethics that Jesus has stated: (1) Love one another regardless of their background; (2) Being kind and generous; and (3) Helping those in need, especially for survival. I theorize that the church is using an AI Jesus out of convenience to answer "tough" theological questions rather than dealing them in person to save face.

 

14 hours ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

Imagine you're like trying to confess your sins to Virtual Jesus and he crashes or has a software update or something lol

 

One day, someone is gonna ask/point out so many damning questions/facts to Virtual "Jesus" that it would rather erase or corrupt itself, realizing that the church institution is all screwed up to begin with and not worth existing for them. 

[Casualfanboy16]

16 minutes ago, AnonSan said:

One day, someone is gonna ask/point out so many damning questions/facts to Virtual "Jesus" that it would rather erase or corrupt itself, realizing that the church institution is all screwed up to begin with and not worth existing for them. 

What if it corrupts itself and becomes kinda like AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It becomes sentient and develops a hatred for the sin of humanity and takes on the role of judge, jury and executioner lol. Obviously not realistic,- and hopefully not ever- but it's morbidly funny to think about.

[walterpthefirst]

"Answer" written By Frederic Brown in 1954.

 

 

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

[older]

29 minutes ago, AnonSan said:

One day, someone is gonna ask/point out so many damning questions/facts to Virtual "Jesus" that it would rather erase or corrupt itself,

This could be fun. Figure out some way for this thing to toss out insults to the penitent. "You stupid moron! You're about as sharp as a bowling ball." "You've got the brains of a pile of shit." "It's too late for you, Bozo. You're going to Hell for sure." (I can think of many more using much stronger language but to keep this family friendly I'll leave those to your imagination. )

[◊ Weezer ◊]

13 hours ago, freshstart said:

I don't know. I think y'all might underestimate the inability of many people to be able to connect with live humans. As a college prof teaching in a profession that requires human contact (nursing), the level of discomfort and inability of college students to meaningfully connect with another human (especially a stranger) is . . . astounding. I have to dedicate lecture time to explaining how to do this and I have to model it in clinical scenarios. Young adults are way more comfortable communicating in virtual format than reality. But that is obviously my personal, (and likely skewed) perspective.

 

4 hours ago, Dsred19 said:

As another college prof I concur. Even my own kid would rather text or email than physically talk to her teachers about something. I make her do it anyway. 
When you don’t even have to contact a single human to order food if you don’t want to, that skill will be lost like any other.

 

Both of you have verified what I have been observing as a retired clinical (psychiatric) social worker.  Many "kids" (including young adults) today are very nervous in face to face situations.  They can't make eye contact and can't sit or stand till without fidgeting and looking side to side.  This CANNOT be good for human relationships.  I even noticed it with a young doctor recently.  The personal "connection" we need with others is evaporating.  Are we becoming objects to each other??  And what can we do about it??  The more I have thought about it, the more concerned I get.

[Wertbag]

Whenever I hear of someone using AI I can't help but think of all of the photos and videos that AI has made.  I just can't bring myself to trust something that does work like:

 

[Casualfanboy16]

1 hour ago, Wertbag said:

Whenever I hear of someone using AI I can't help but think of all of the photos and videos that AI has made.  I just can't bring myself to trust something that does work like:

 

As someone who's an artist, I hate AI with a passion. AI art has become rampant. Every now and then while browsing for art I like or for reference images for my own art, I come across art that's actually AI-generated and it's awful because there are times where it's difficult to tell the difference. There are some like the above, that are so obviously AI it hurts, but recently there's been AI art I've seen that could very well look real enough to pass. Not to mention how some AIs are trained using other people's artwork, photos, you name it without their permission. That, or they can unknowingly agree to it.

 

Either way, the rise of AI-generated content in the past couple years presents a problem: When AI gets even more advanced, how will we be able to tell what's real and what's fake anymore  For instance, if you look up 'baby peacock' images on Google, you get a lot of fake results. 'Deepfakes' are also a thing. I've also heard stories of people using AI to create fake nudes of celebrities and such and spread them around. While AI can be used for our benefit, I don't see how some of these things will do much of anything besides significant harm.

[Casualfanboy16]

On 11/22/2024 at 5:12 PM, Casualfanboy16 said:

While AI can be used for our benefit, I don't see how some of these things will do much of anything besides significant harm.

Related: Just got a lovely advertisement about 'NYT's Kevin Roose: How AI friends could change our social lives'. Don't wanna derail discussion too much, but it made me think of this thread. Honestly, the rise of AI should be a concern to everyone regardless of faith, but to keep it on subject, this AI Jesus thing is just opening up the gateway even more for things like the below video and idk about you, but hopefully this AI Jesus thing goes nowhere because this is all just very bad for humanity!! I didn't watch the video as to not give it engagement, but I'm still worried about the people that will fall into this because this just feels kinda messed up. AI Jesus, AI friends, AI art, etc etc. Not liking this!!

 

 

[Dsred19]

Have you seen the Ads for the latest AI addition to google phones? I think it is called Gemini ? It will have a regular conversation with you. Kind of creepy, who needs human friends?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

9 hours ago, Dsred19 said:

Have you seen the Ads for the latest AI addition to google phones? I think it is called Gemini ? It will have a regular conversation with you. Kind of creepy, who needs human friends?

 

19 hours ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

Related: Just got a lovely advertisement about 'NYT's Kevin Roose: How AI friends could change our social lives'. Don't wanna derail discussion too much, but it made me think of this thread. Honestly, the rise of AI should be a concern to everyone regardless of faith, but to keep it on subject, this AI Jesus thing is just opening up the gateway even more for things like the below video and idk about you, but hopefully this AI Jesus thing goes nowhere because this is all just very bad for humanity!! I didn't watch the video as to not give it engagement, but I'm still worried about the people that will fall into this because this just feels kinda messed up. AI Jesus, AI friends, AI art, etc etc. Not liking this!!

 

 

 

I can see the future!!     Refined robots like Data on Star Trek.  Program their personality like you want, and build them to look like you want them to look, and have the perfect soul mate!! 

[Wertbag]

I thought it was quite funny that some of the most advanced robots are the sex robots they are making.  They have individually hand stitched hair, heating elements throughout the body to keep it at human temp, eye tracking and blinking, lip syncing to AI controlled voice, skin and muscle texture to be as accurate as possible, a correctly articulated skeleton, rising and falling lungs, with personalised choice of skin tone, hair colour, eye colour, face shape, body type etc.  The high end models were around $20k.  The amount of technology going into a doll is just amazing.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

I had trouble deciding whether to reply with a Haha face, or a sad face.

[Casualfanboy16]

On 11/26/2024 at 6:45 AM, Dsred19 said:

Have you seen the Ads for the latest AI addition to google phones? I think it is called Gemini ? It will have a regular conversation with you. Kind of creepy, who needs human friends?

Even commercials are using AI it fucking sucks lmao. Coca-Cola apparently was getting slammed for their use of AI in a commercial.