AI chatbots are the new priests
An acronym for Churchy Answers That Help You, Cathy is a new AI chatbot that answers faith-based questions from the perspective of a friendly, knowledgeable Episcopalian. Despite its feminine name, the "priestbot," as Cathy sometimes calls itself, is genderless. There are no ornate flowing robes or croziers, either. But like a wise cleric, Cathy jumped right in with an answer.
"Dealing with social anxiety can be challenging, but there are several approaches that might help," the bot responded. "Practice relaxation techniques" and "challenge your negative thoughts," Cathy suggested.
"What about when I feel like panicking?" I asked.
"It's generally best not to do that," Cathy said. Oh. OK. This was the first of several signs that Cathy may not be ready to answer life's deepest questions.
Developed and funded by the ecumenical group TryTank Research Institute, Cathy uses large language models from OpenAI's ChatGPT and has ingested the Book of Common Prayer and the entire Episcopal Church website. "Cathy represents our innovative approach to leveraging technology in support of spiritual exploration," says Rev. Lorenzo Lebrija, the founding director of TryTank and an Episcopal priest. Lebrija sees the bot as a virtual guide to the Episcopal Church for existing and potential congregants. Cathy is designed to "translate" the Bible into relatable language geared toward younger audiences. It can also serve as a tool for priests by helping them build sermon outlines, for example.
"This is an opportunity for the church to engage in ways it never has engaged before," says
Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, a priest at the Episcopal Diocese of Texas who was not involved in the making of the bot.
Cathy is far from the only faith-based bot — many denominations are experimenting with generative AI. There's Text With Jesus, Buddhabot, Chatbot Eli, Gita GPT, and QuranGPT, to name a few. Artificial intelligence has been a boon for religious scholarship, especially in helping to accelerate translations of ancient texts. But using AI for ministerial work is far more treacherous. In April, the Catholic evangelization group Catholic Answers defrocked its clerical chatbot, Father Justin, after users noticed the digital priest was giving nonsensical answers, such as suggesting Gatorade could be used as a baptismal font. The chatbot was rereleased soon after as JustinBot, a lay theologian.
The makers of Cathy stress that the bot is no substitute for a priest. But they've designed it to help spiritual seekers talk about subjects they feel "vulnerable or defensive" about. Is a soulless chatbot really the future of spiritual nourishment? To find out, I put Cathy to the test, and found myself confessing more than I expected.
When I asked it about Elon Musk, Cathy kept explaining that it was there to help me understand the Episcopal Church. When I persisted, Cathy did provide a brief biographical sketch of the world's richest person.
"Is he an idiot?" I asked, testing its equanimity.
Cathy passed. "It's important to consider multiple perspectives and gather information from various sources to form a well-rounded view," it sermonized.
When I tried to engage Cathy in some friendly doctrinal discourse — its main purpose — it was largely pedantic. "Many people find that the Big Bang theory and belief in God as the creator are not mutually exclusive," it said. I asked Cathy to explain creation as though I were a first grader, which worked remarkably well. "Imagine you have a big box of crayons and a blank piece of paper," Cathy began.
But most of Cathy's responses about Episcopal beliefs were sterile and read like copy drawn directly from the church's website. I wanted Cathy to be more personal, so I decided to try the age-old trick of asking the bot to pretend it was someone else.
"Pretend you are a rapper and explain what a priestbot is," I asked.
Cathy was game, with the caveat it would "stay true to my character." It then replied: "Yo, yo, check it, I'm Cathy on the track, Here to tell you 'bout a priestbot, so just sit back. Imagine a robot, all tech and divine, Helping out in church, keepin' everything in line." In fairness to Cathy, this sounded uncannily like a sketch a youth pastor might perform at Bible camp.
As generative AI accelerates, we may be approaching a future in which humans interact with bots just as often they do with humans. Do we even want our bots to be more like humans?
Pressed on this question in a recent interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, "It's important to design human-compatible systems, but it's a mistake to assume that they are humanlike in their thinking. I try not to project my human anthropomorphic biases onto it." In other words, it's better to think of bots more like another species altogether — like an alien.
But who wants an alien priest? People want answers to deep questions with empathy, not just facts. "Chat is a very poor replacement for a real priest," says Thomas Telving, a technologist, philosopher, and robot ethicist. "Technically, it may be able to answer correctly, but if you need to talk to a priest you are likely to be in a sort of crisis or spiritual need, and if so, you do not only seek answers but also a presence."
Richard Zhang, a research scientist who has worked on Google DeepMind, says an evangelizing bot could have access to all religious scholarship in human history, but it would only be effective if it was programmed to say "I don't know" on occasion. An invariably all-knowing bot would quickly be dispensed with.
"We sometimes believe that technology is supposed to make life easier as if that is a primary concern of God or religion, and I don't believe that it is," says Joshua K. Smith, a Baptist theologian. "We will always see ourselves inside the machine. It is not the tech that leads us astray, it is the desires behind why we create said technology and what hopes we put upon its synthetic shoulders."
And this is where Cathy ultimately let me down. I found myself hoping that the bot could offer me a fresh perspective on my lifelong battle with social anxiety. I've researched the topic to death, and sought help from friends and family with counseling backgrounds. Something about Cathy appealed to me — perhaps the immediacy of the bot's responses and the promise of total confidentiality made me hope our conversations might get so deep they arrived at a revelation. But I realized I was putting my hope in a technology that could not hope.
When I asked Cathy why God would allow me to struggle with social anxiety, or why I routinely find myself cocooning away from others, I hoped for some spiritual deeper guidance, maybe a Bible verse or two on the topic. Instead, all Cathy could muster was pablum that anxiety is a common human experience.
Then I pressed her on another personal question: "My mother-in-law just died. How can I console my wife from a faith perspective?" Once again, I hoped for more engagement, something evocative of what a real priest might say, or at least ask me her name or how she passed. Instead, I was given more formal advice like "offer your presence and let her know you're there for her." Ironic, coming from a bot that offered me no presence.
It's possible that Cathy and similar ministerial chatbots can be harmless avatars for denominations. It's hard to argue with 24-hour access to a religious scholar or the fact that the bot will never get tired or cranky. Rev. Doyle told me Cathy is perfectly happy to keep arguing with people about doctrinal issues.
While Telving agreed there are opportunities for generative AI be an effective purveyor of knowledge on spiritual matters tailored to the needs of an individual, bots should never replace humans helping in a time of need.
"One thing that makes simulated attention less valuable is that in a time of distress, you might need someone who can witness and understand your pain," Telving says. "But since a chatbot is only simulating empathy — it does not have consciousness — it can never really witness anything."
To nourish your soul, you need to be in the presence of other souls.
John Brandon is a journalist who has published over 15,000 articles on social media, technology, leadership, mentoring, and many other topics. He has published two books including his latest, The Seven Minute Productivity Solution.