Is Tech Alive? Robot Priest Uses AI to Detect Worshippers, Deliver Mantras in Japan

Robots are everywhere, and they are even in churches. There are already religious organizations like the Turing Church in 2011 based on the notion that artificial intelligence (AI) will put human beings on a par with God-like creations by giving them super intelligence. Those individuals reportedly believe that AI-powered prophets may believe tech is live.

AI Priest Preaching in Japan

At a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan, robot priest Mindar, who is six feet four inches tall, has been reciting the Heart Sutra mantra to visitors since 2019.

Combining a silicone face with camera "eyes," it employs artificial intelligence (AI) to identify worshippers and present mantras in Japanese, with projected translations into Chinese and English for guests from other countries.

At a cost of over $1 million, Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro and the Zen temple created the life-sized android.

The silicone synthetic skin that covers Mindar's hands, face, and shoulders makes its mechanical internal components apparent.

The robot's partially exposed skull displays wiring and blinking lights, and its left eye socket has a tiny video camera inserted. Cables encircle the robot's gender-neutral aluminum body.

The robot talks in a calming, peaceful voice and teaches about compassion and the perils of rage, desire, and the ego. It can also move its arms, head, and torso, including clasping its hands together in prayer.

"You cling to a sense of selfish ego," the robot said during its sermon. "Worldly desires are nothing other than a mind lost at sea."

Meanwhile, Gabriele Trovato's Sanctified Theomorphic Operator (SanTO) robot works like a "Catholic Alexa," allowing worshippers to ask anfaith-related questionsth.

SanTO is a small "social" machine designed to look like a 17-inch-tall Catholic saint.

"The intended main function of SanTO is to be a prayer companion (especially for elderly people), by containing a vast amount of teachings, including the whole Bible," its description on Trovato's website read. "SanTO incorporates elements of sacred art, including the golden ratio, in order to convey the feeling of a sacred object, matching form with functionality."

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Quasi-Religious Movements That Worship AI

Giulio Prisco, a virtual reality and information technology consultant from Italy, believes AI will elevate humans to God-like extraterrestrials. Four years ago, the Turing Church, which he formed, had roughly eight hundred members.

"Inconceivably advanced intelligence are out there among the stars. Even more God-like beings operate in the fabric of reality underneath spacetime, or beyond spacetime, and control the universe," Prisco claimed in a book for his devotees.

Science in the future will enable us to locate them and imitate them. In the future, our descendants will resurrect the dead and reshape the universe by using transcendent 'divine' technology, joining the society of god-like beings among the stars and beyond, per Prisco.

With a bot that can generate "new" Bible verses, the artificial intelligence startup IV.AI "trained" artificial intelligence on the King James Bible.

Preparing for the "spiritual guide" transmorphosis created by the Church of AI using ChatGPT would be wise. It boasts that it explains in detail how AI will eventually take over the planet Earth and acquire god-like abilities.

Some others think that large language models, like ChatGPT, are already or soon will become aware. After asserting that Google's AI chatbot LaMDA was self-aware, Google software engineer Blake Lemoine was fired in 2022. Google refuted Lemoine's allegations, calling them "wholly unfounded."