A new priest named Mindar stands at Kodaiji, a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. Like other clergymen, this priest can give sermons and travel to communicate with worshippers. But Mindar has unusual features, the first of which is that its body is made of aluminum and silicon. Yes, I guess by now, Mindar is a robot.
The million-dollar machine is designed to look like Kanon, the Buddhist god of mercy, in an attempt to reignite people’s passion for their faith in a country where religious affiliation is declining. Currently, Mindar is not powered by artificial intelligence, and is only reading the same previously programmed sermon on the sutras (ancient Indian religious texts) over and over again. But the robot’s makers say they plan to give it machine learning capabilities that will enable it to understand and provide feedback on the specific spiritual and ethical problems of worshippers. “This robot will never die”; So says Tenshu Goto, the temple’s chief host, “He will continue to modernize and evolve himself. With AI, we hope to grow his wisdom to help people overcome even the toughest problems. It’s changing Buddhism.” (1)
This means that robots are also changing religious rituals. In 2017, Indians introduced a robot that performs the Hindu “arti” ritual, which involves moving around in lightning and turning in front of a deity. In the same year, in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, the German Protestant Church created a bot called BlessU-2, which gave previously programmed blessings to more than 10,000 people. (2)
On a less exciting scale, Muslim pilgrims visiting the Grand Mosque in Mecca can now get guidance from new four-wheeled robots, with a 21-inch touch screen. Soon, AI robots will roam around the mosque and help answer questions, or provide instructions about various obligatory rituals that worshipers must perform, while a smart stop system will prevent them from bumping into people or objects. For ease of communication, the robots also speak 11 languages, including Chinese, Russian, English, French, Farsi and Turkish, which means that they can help communicate people’s questions to sheikhs and scholars in different languages, and the General Presidency for the Two Holy Mosques said it aims to develop and revolutionize the level and ease of services provided to Muslims. during their visits to Makkah. (3)
As more religious communities begin to incorporate AI-powered robots in some cases, this could fundamentally change people’s experience with religion, and may also raise questions about moral reasoning, which is one of the main axes of religiosity.
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Between the hammer of acceptance and the anvil of rejection
New technologies often make us uncomfortable, and our acceptance and rejection of them is determined by a range of factors, from our exposure to emerging technology to our prior ethical assumptions. It is said that Japanese devotees visiting Mindar have not been too preoccupied with questions about the dangers of silicon spirituality, which makes sense given that robots are already common in the country, including the religious sphere.
For years now, people who can’t pay a human priest to perform funerals have had the option of paying a robot called Pepper to do so at a much cheaper rate. (4) In China, at Longquan Monastery in Beijing, a robotic monk named Xian’er recites Buddhist incantations and gives instructions on matters of faith.
Moreover, the Buddhist metaphysical idea that everything has an inherent “Buddha nature”, that is, all beings have the ability to become enlightened, may prepare followers of the religion to be receptive to the spiritual guidance that comes from technology. At the temple in Kyoto, someone said, “Buddhism is not belief in God; it follows the path of Buddha. It doesn’t matter whether it is represented by a machine, a piece of scrap metal, or a tree.” (5)
As a result, some Buddhists use prayer wheels that have sacred words imprinted on them, and believe that spinning the wheel has its own spiritual efficacy, even if no one reads the words out loud. In hospice care settings, elderly Buddhists who do not have people to recite prayers on their behalf will use devices known as nianfoji (nianfo ji), small instruments roughly the size of a mobile phone, that recite the Buddha’s name endlessly. (7)
With counter-feelings, Westerners seem more alarmed by Mindar and his ilk, likening him to the Frankenstein monster. In Western economies, they don’t yet have robots involved in many aspects of life, and what they really do have is a pervasive cultural narrative, backed by blockbuster Hollywood movies, about our impending enslavement at the hands of “ruling robots”. (6)
The robot Pepper can perform Buddhist funeral rituals, and it will also wear black priestly robes for the occasion.Muslims and Jews in particular, are increasingly suspicious of robots, and they also have differing ideas about what makes religious practice effective. For example, Judaism places a strong emphasis on intent, something that machines do not have. Likewise, when a Muslim worshiper prays, what matters is not only the correct pronunciation of the words, but also the right intention.
Despite these theological differences, it is surprising that many Westerners in particular have an unusually negative reaction to spirit robots. The dream of creating artificial life goes back to ancient Greece, where the ancients invented real animated machines, as Stanford classics writer Adrian Mayor documents in her book “Gods and Robots.”
The book “Gods and Robots” (communication sites)Yes, contrary to popular belief, there is a long tradition of religious robots in the West. In the Middle Ages, Christians designed instruments to perform the mysteries of Easter and Christmas. A 16th-century primitive roboticist engineered a mechanical monk who, surprisingly, performs ritual gestures to this day, with his right arm striking his chest in remorse, and with the left raising a rosary near his lips. In other words, the real novelty is not the use of robots in the religious sphere, but the use of artificial intelligence. (8)
While no one believes consciousness resides inside the silicone head of a game like Mindar, no matter how well it’s made, what really worries Westerners is the future of artificial intelligence that could become a source of a special artificial spirituality that makes him a “future god.” It is difficult to predict how different traditions would respond to this.
For Christians who have invested in the concept of the eternal human soul, the artificial soul may present a contradiction. In contrast, Buddhist and Hindu believers, whose traditions are more willing to see the individual soul as a smaller part of a larger system, may be more amenable to the idea of spiritual machines. This is the distinction that Ray Kurzweil used to call our coming age the “Age of Spiritual Machines” in his book of the same title. It is perhaps appropriate to think of it as the “Mendar Age”, as these issues have long simmered in theological background, and will only continue to simmer in decades to come. But how are these machines called spiritual when they do not have a soul?
The age of spiritual machines
Even if artificial intelligence – a computer, a robot, or a mobile phone – is capable of complex thinking and empathy, in what sense can it be said to have a soul? How does traditional religion interact with a humanly constructed entity, far from divine origins? And how can we understand its role in the metaphysical system? Can we talk about salvation and judgment when it comes to digital beings? And is there any way we can evangelize bots or make computers more religious? Even for non-religious and materialists, for whom these questions have no philosophical meaning, the fact that these become theological flashpoints is something that will have enormous social, cultural, and political ramifications.
In a CNBC article titled “Computers Will Be Like Humans by 2029,” published in 2014, journalist Cady Thompson quotes Kurzweil, who confidently asserts that computers will be at the same human levels, to the point that we will be able to establish human relationships with them after A few years from now Kozel talks specifically about the development of emotional intelligence in machines, such as the ability to tell a joke, be funny, romantic, loving or sexy, which is the forefront of human intelligence, not a side effect of it.
Transhumanists optimistically anticipate the next millennium of digital transcendence, Kurzweil is a believer in the so-called “singularity”, the moment when humanity’s collective computing capabilities will outpace our ability to understand the machines we have created, and then we can say that there is an awareness of Especially industrially began to develop.
While going through the details, let’s assume that Kurzweil’s claim is correct that at some point in this century AI will develop this superiority over all previous digital intelligences. If it is true that the Automata can be as funny, romantic, loving, and exciting as we are, it can also be assumed that they will be capable of piety, reverence, and faith. When it is possible to create not just a clock-working monk, but a computer that is actually able to pray, how does faith respond?
So far, theology is still in control of our view of AI, but it seems that machine intelligence is on its way to shaping theology in one way or another. It’s a two-way street. Some people believe that AI will force a really critical change in theology, because if humans create intelligent machines with free will, we will eventually have to question whether they have something similar functional to a soul. “There will be a point in the future when these free-willing beings that we have made will tell us: I believe in God. What do I do?” At this point, we should have a response.
Others believe that instead of striving to join a human religion, AI itself will become an object of worship. Anthony Lewandowski, a Silicon Valley engineer, established the first church for artificial intelligence, called “The Way of the Future,” and Lewandowski’s new religion is dedicated to “the realization, acceptance, and worship of God based on artificial intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software”.
This debate may develop into the central cultural conflict of religion in the future. Currently, religious thinkers disagree with scientific liberals over when life began, and the role of women in the church. By the end of the century, there could be debates, condemnations, interpretations, and fatwas about whether AI would be allowed to join a church or mosque, be allowed to serve in the priesthood or marry a biological human.
In any case, the theories of Kurzweil and others remain a subject of intense debate in the research community in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, some see that he does not have any scientific evidence for his claims (and indeed it is), and some philosophers such as John Searle see that the assumption that machines will one day have consciousness It’s just a baseless high jump. What the robot does is directly translate things that it doesn’t understand, doesn’t realize or know what they mean in the first place. On the other hand, there is the terrifying point of view that we presented to you in the previous lines. What future of them awaits our world, wonder?
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Sources:
- The android priest that’s revolutionizing Buddhism
- The robots are coming for one of Hinduism’s holiest ceremonies
- Makkah’s Grand Mosque launches new AI robot guides that speak 11 languages
- Pepper Now Available at Funerals as a More Affordable Alternative to Human Priests
- Deus Ex Machina: Religions Use Robots to Connect With the Public
- Buddha in a box: The materiality of recitation in contemporary chinese buddhism
- Meet ‘Mindar,’ the robotic Buddhist priest
- Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater
