Should We Have AI Doing Catholic Apologetics?

[Michie]

Catholics Answers just announced the release of the “Father Justin” interactive AI app, which will “provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism.”

I have to admit, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this.

As a former tech geek, I still get excited by advances in technology. On just that basis, it’s amazing what these apps can do. I took “Father Justin” on a test drive, and “he” did a good job of answering even difficult questions. I asked about abortion, homosexuality, the traditional Latin Mass, the legitimacy of Pope Francis, and many other topics. Every time “Father Justin” gave a solid, faithfully-Catholic answer (he almost even sounds like Jimmy Akin at times). There’s no comparison between this AI and something like ChatGPT when it comes to receiving truly Catholic answers.

I’m also a fan of Catholic Answers, so I’d rather see them develop something like this than, for example, the National Catholic Reporter or Catholics for Choice. Interactive AI apps are the rage right now, so having a solid Catholic organization dipping its toe into that space is probably needed.

But…(you knew there would be a “but,” didn’t you?)

Continued below.

Should We Have AI Doing Catholic Apologetics?

By Eric Sammons - Catholic Answers has released an apologetics AI interactive app and it’s solidly Catholic. But I still have concerns.

crisismagazine.com

 

[DJWhalen]

What is the world changing to they got a AI priest!

 

[jamiec]

Catholics Answers just announced the release of the “Father Justin” interactive AI app, which will “provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism.”

I have to admit, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this.

As a former tech geek, I still get excited by advances in technology. On just that basis, it’s amazing what these apps can do. I took “Father Justin” on a test drive, and “he” did a good job of answering even difficult questions. I asked about abortion, homosexuality, the traditional Latin Mass, the legitimacy of Pope Francis, and many other topics. Every time “Father Justin” gave a solid, faithfully-Catholic answer (he almost even sounds like Jimmy Akin at times). There’s no comparison between this AI and something like ChatGPT when it comes to receiving truly Catholic answers.

I’m also a fan of Catholic Answers, so I’d rather see them develop something like this than, for example, the National Catholic Reporter or Catholics for Choice. Interactive AI apps are the rage right now, so having a solid Catholic organization dipping its toe into that space is probably needed.

But…(you knew there would be a “but,” didn’t you?)

Continued below.

Should We Have AI Doing Catholic Apologetics?

By Eric Sammons - Catholic Answers has released an apologetics AI interactive app and it’s solidly Catholic. But I still have concerns.

crisismagazine.com

Catholics Answers just announced the release of the “Father Justin” interactive AI app, which will “provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism.”

I have to admit, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this.

As a former tech geek, I still get excited by advances in technology. On just that basis, it’s amazing what these apps can do. I took “Father Justin” on a test drive, and “he” did a good job of answering even difficult questions. I asked about abortion, homosexuality, the traditional Latin Mass, the legitimacy of Pope Francis, and many other topics. Every time “Father Justin” gave a solid, faithfully-Catholic answer (he almost even sounds like Jimmy Akin at times). There’s no comparison between this AI and something like ChatGPT when it comes to receiving truly Catholic answers.

I’m also a fan of Catholic Answers, so I’d rather see them develop something like this than, for example, the National Catholic Reporter or Catholics for Choice. Interactive AI apps are the rage right now, so having a solid Catholic organization dipping its toe into that space is probably needed.

But…(you knew there would be a “but,” didn’t you?)

Continued below.

Should We Have AI Doing Catholic Apologetics?

By Eric Sammons - Catholic Answers has released an apologetics AI interactive app and it’s solidly Catholic. But I still have concerns.

crisismagazine.com

No. Absolutely not. Apologetics is a species of Theology. And Theology is, among other things, an exercise of the virtue of faith. And only human persons, living in this world, on the way to their heavenly home, are capable of exercising the virtue - which is a God-given habit of the soul - of faith.

An AI is a man-made machine, an artificial thing, as its name says it is; it is no more capable of Apologetics, than it is of judging sins & absolving contrite sinners. An impersonal machine has no metaphysical or spiritual capacity for communion with God - something that a Catholic child has in abundance. Apologetics engages the affections, the appetites, the memory, the understanding, the will, the virtues, and the grace of God; an AI lacks all of these. An impersonal machine may be capable of producing the semblance of human & personal acts - but it has no soul, so it is incapable of eliciting the realities that are human & personal acts.

The anthropology of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "The Measure of A Man" is not that of the Catholic Church, because it is not true. It is woefully insufficient. Captain Picard, a human being - albeit a fictitious one; but let us, for the sake of argument, suppose him to be a really existing human person - is made in the image of God. Data, a man-made machine, is not made in the image of God. What human persons are made of, does not exhaust what or who or why they have being. Robots, whether AIs or holograms or other inventions of creatures, have no supernatural vocation; their human inventors cannot give them a supernatural vocation they themselves have not perfectly realised, a vocation that is God's alone to give.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Catholics Answers just announced the release of the “Father Justin” interactive AI app, which will “provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism.”

I have to admit, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this.

As a former tech geek, I still get excited by advances in technology. On just that basis, it’s amazing what these apps can do. I took “Father Justin” on a test drive, and “he” did a good job of answering even difficult questions. I asked about abortion, homosexuality, the traditional Latin Mass, the legitimacy of Pope Francis, and many other topics. Every time “Father Justin” gave a solid, faithfully-Catholic answer (he almost even sounds like Jimmy Akin at times). There’s no comparison between this AI and something like ChatGPT when it comes to receiving truly Catholic answers.

I’m also a fan of Catholic Answers, so I’d rather see them develop something like this than, for example, the National Catholic Reporter or Catholics for Choice. Interactive AI apps are the rage right now, so having a solid Catholic organization dipping its toe into that space is probably needed.

But…(you knew there would be a “but,” didn’t you?)

Continued below.

Should We Have AI Doing Catholic Apologetics?

By Eric Sammons - Catholic Answers has released an apologetics AI interactive app and it’s solidly Catholic. But I still have concerns.

crisismagazine.com

Catholic Answers has just changed ‘Fr. Justin’ into just ‘Justin’. Seems there was no evidence of his actual ordination and that raised a LOT of red flags with the CA readers. As it did with me.

I have not heard (yet) of any wild conclusions by ‘Justin’ but just wait. Might be better than some priests. Or not.

 

[Michie]

AI 'priest' is 'laicized' after social media pushback

The nonprofit apologetics website Catholic Answers debuted a "Father Justin" interactive AI app April 23, aiming "to provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism," according to an announcement that day by the organization.

www.oursundayvisitor.com

 

[Michie]

"Artificial priest" shows problems with AI companions

Apologetics site eager to get answers to more people than they can humanly respond to. But questions about how the Church can best use the technology remain.

aleteia.org