One of the attractions in Kyoto, Japan, is Kodaiji, a 400-year-old temple of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism. Recently, this temple has been visited by tourists and Buddhist followers who would like to listen to the sermons from a robot monk.
Programmed Buddhist Preacher
The robot priest made from aluminum and silicon was born in 2019 from the collaboration between Kodaiji Temple and a team of scientists led by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro from the Department of Systems Innovation at Osaka University. This humanoid named Mindar was designed to resemble the Buddhist goddess of mercy.
The robot priest was created to help in enhancing spiritual experiences and in reviving interest in Buddhism which is already fading due to modernism in the country. According to its creators, Mindar bridges the gap between the spiritual realm, where Buddha exists, and the physical world, where he materializes through the programmed robot.
Aside from citing preprogrammed sermons, Mindar can also perform other tasks. It has a camera lens in its left eye, enabling it to maintain eye contact with the worshippers while its torso and hands can imitate human-like interaction. The robot's design also includes an interactive 3D projection mapping allowing Mindar to display videos of worshippers on a wall.
Are AI Priests Credible?
Mindar represents the increasing robotic workforce which triggers job insecurity across various industries. Robots have been used in fields initially against automation, such as journalism and psychotherapy. Now there are debates about whether robots and artificial intelligence can substitute priests and monks.
People previously thought that some jobs would not submit to robotics. The psychology of automation reveals that despite the human-like capabilities demonstrated by robots, they still lack credibility. Without this quality, such machines can never outperform humans. While designing robots, engineers rarely think about credibility, but it sets the standard for which jobs are impossible to automate.
In human psychology, capability describes whether a person can do something, while credibility explains whether they will be trusted to do specific tasks. In short, credibility refers to a person's reputation as a genuine source of information.
Experts suggest that credibility can be earned when a person behaves in a way that would be irrational if they do not indeed hold their beliefs. In religion, clergymen display credibility through celibacy and pilgrimage, and these practices will not make sense if they do not cling to their beliefs authentically. In other words, sacrifices must be made on such beliefs' behalf to display credibility.
Advances in science have made robots highly capable, but they may not be credible enough. They can preach sermons and write political messages, but it does not mean they authentically understand the beliefs they convey. Robots cannot engage in sacrificial behavior like celibacy since they do not feel the cost.
To test how the lack of credibility will affect the religious organizations that use robot priests, a study was conducted by a team of researchers led by behavior science assistant professor Joshua Conrad Jackson from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. They collaborated with Kodai-ji Temple and other worship sites with spectacular robot priests displaying special effects as they performed their religious duties.
Their investigation reveals that people perceive Mindar as a less credible religious figure compared to the human monks working at Kodai-ji Temple. The research team also discovered that people who saw the machine were 12% less likely to donate to the temple than the temple visitors who did not watch Mindar.
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