Robot priests can bless you, advise you,
and even perform your funeral
By Sigal Samuel Updated Jan 13, 2020,
11:25am EST
A new priest named Mindar is holding forth at
Kodaiji, a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto,
Japan. Like other clergy members, this priest can
deliver sermons and move around to interface with
worshippers. Mindar is a robot, designed to look like
Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy, and cost $1
million.
As more religious communities begin to incorporate
robotics — in some cases, AI-powered — questions
arise about how technology could change our
religious experiences. Traditionally, those experiences
are valuable in part because they leave room for the
spontaneous and surprising, the emotional and even
the mystical. That could be lost if we mechanize
them.
Another risk has to do with how an AI priest would
handle ethical queries. Robots whose algorithms learn
from previous data may nudge us toward decisions
based on what people have done in the past,
incrementally homogenizing answers and narrowing the scope of our spiritual imagination. One could
argue, however, that risk also exists with human
clergy, since the clergy is bounded too — there’s
already a built-in nudging or limiting factor.
AI systems can be particularly problematic in that
they often function as black boxes. We typically don’t
know what sorts of biases are coded into them or
what sorts of human nuance and context they’re
failing to understand. A human priest who knows
your broader context as a whole person may gather
this and give you the right recommendation.
Human clergy members serve as the anchor for a
community, bringing people together. They provide
human contact, which is in danger of becoming a
luxury good as we create robots to more cheaply do
the work of people. Robots, notwithstanding, might
be able to transcend some social divides, such as race
and gender, to enhance community in a way that’s
more liberating.
Ultimately, in religion as in other domains, robots
and humans are perhaps best understood not as
competitors but as collaborators. Each offers
something the other lacks.
(S. Samuel, Robot priests can bless you, advise you, and even
perform your funeral. Vox, 9/9/2019. Disponível em
https://www.vox.com/ future-perfect/2019/9/9/20851753/ai-religionrobot-priest-mindar-budd hism-christianity. Acessado em 05/08/2020.)
Qual das afirmações abaixo sintetiza corretamente a
discussão sobre os riscos do uso de robôs na função de
clérigos, tal como exposta no texto?
