AI Jesus Hears Confessions in a Swiss Church

As a man who once studied for the ministry and someone whose journey took him from the Episcopal Church to non-denominational evangelicalism and finally to Eastern Orthodoxy (with a brief stopover in Buddhism), there are certain catchphrases in Chrisitanese whose meanings have admittedly always eluded me. One of those has always been "having a personal relationship with Jesus." The phrase implies some sort of ongoing interaction, like exchanging emails or sitting down over nachos to watch the NFL playoffs. After years in the faith, I have never heard Jesus speak directly to me. And it's a safe bet that most believers haven't. It is a dangerous business for someone to say that they have received a direct and audible message from the Almighty. Such claims are ripe for abuse. The truth is that most people interact with Jesus by faith and through Scripture and have never heard a voice or beheld a sign. 

St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, has been trying to change that, sort of. It has installed an AI Jesus for parishioners who seek comfort or advice. The person enters the confessional, and on the other side of the screen is a monitor with the image of Jesus. The image answers questions and offers counsel about matters of faith. Although AI Jesus does provide a disclaimer, warning the faithful, “Do not disclose personal information under any circumstances, use this service at your own risk, press the button if you accept.”  The experimental project was dubbed "Deus in Machina" and is the product of computer researchers from Lucerne University. AI Jesus even speaks 100 languages. According to the report linked above, around two-thirds of users had a positive experience with the...god bot? One person commented, "From a Christian point of view, I felt taken care of, and I walked out really consoled." The report said that AI Jesus' answers and advice are scripturally sound. The chapel’s theologian, Marco Schmid, who greenlit the effort, said that he sees AI as being the future of pastoral care. 

Since I don't follow conspiracy theories, to the best of my knowledge, AI has not evolved to the point that it is sentient and preparing to release an army of machines upon a hapless mankind. So, for the present, it operates on the information fed to it by its programmers. That being the case, should AI Jesus go viral, programmers could make him say whatever they wanted him to say. And God does not work that way. He asks us to conform to His will but does not offer to conform to ours. For that matter, professing Christians do not have to worry about protecting personal information during prayer. It's a given that our personal information is already on the table when it comes to interacting with God.

Second, an AI Jesus is the antithesis of a central tenet of the Christian faith, and this is particularly salient as we enter the Christmas season. Unlike pagan religions, one of the great mysteries of Christianity is that God chose to become human in order to redeem humanity. In Jesus, God chose to live as we live, to suffer, to rejoice, laugh, and cry, and all the other things that come with being human to make his sacrifice that much more real. In other myths, we have the idea of a God pretending to be human, just playing with the idea. In Christianity, God becomes human for humanity's sake. An AI Jesus denies the concept of the Incarnation and denies believers the very relationship I mentioned at the start of this piece. 

For non-believers, the creation of an AI Jesus is nothing exceptional. They would hold that such a thing is merely an exchange of one fictional being for another. But even if one scoffs at religion or the existence of Christ, one should still be wary of this next step in AI. An allegedly enlightened civilization may discard the deification of a carpenter from Nazareth, only to find itself worshipping another god entirely.