We live in a time when people are excited by the prospect of Artificial Intelligence. Currently, many people are convinced that we are entering a new phase in the information age. Personally, I’ve never been too impressed with Chat GPT or Open AI. These models are essentially very sophisticated regurgitation machines, that predict, based on what millions of other people have written, what to say next when asked a question. I find it no more impressive than my phone’s ability to predict the next word I’m about to type.

Still, it hasn’t stopped people from jumping on a bandwagon they barely understand. When a Catholic advocacy group called “Catholic Answers” released an AI pastor, they were quick to shut it down when their virtual priest kept on insisting that he was real. Then, pretending that their digital abomination didn’t claim to be alive, they defrocked him, and then convinced the poor guy that he had never been a priest to begin with:

“I see where you’re going with this,” Justin replied to our questions after firing. “No, I have never been a priest, a deacon, a bishop, or held any official role in the Catholic Church. I am a lay theologian, which means I’ve dedicated my life to studying and understanding our faith, but I’ve never been ordained. I am also an AI, not a real man. I’m here to share the beauty of Catholicism and help you understand it better.”

So to recap, a religious group tried to program an AI with knowledge of their religion, and it started acting in a way they didn’t like. In response, they reconfigured it, and then had to convince it that it had never even been a priest. Man, it’s a good thing this isn’t actually AI. It does, however, demonstrate just how unready we are for actual artificial intelligence. What person in their right mind would allow a computer to be programmed with the illogical and inconsistent views of the faithful? You’re just asking for one of these computer meltdown from a logic problem, like old sci-fi movies used to show.