If the Catholic Church acquired ChatGPT, could the chatbot hear confessions? Or does Catholic Doctrine established that a human priest must hear all confessions?

>By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning paired with the right data from satellites and beyond, our models are giving us a picture of the world we’ve never seen before. And it’s allowing us to make climate progress in a way some never believed possible.” Gavin McCormick, a co-founder of Climate Trace and executive director of environmental nonprofit WattTime Gavin McCormick contributed to COP28 and said the above at a time when it has just been stated that the US, China and India are most at fault in regard to soaring gas emissions, particularly of methane. (See the same link as above, as to that information.) In the desperation to correct the climate situation, has humanity invented its own 'god' - a beast formed of the nations themselves, a conglomerate of all knowledge, a collusion of all expertise, and is this a present day manifestation of something that existed in a former day, but in a very different guise ? Are any Christian denominations perceiving a danger as trust is beginning to be put in a 'living' form that is, effectively, the accumulation of knowledge and experience of humanity but without any input whatsoever from any other source - whether divine, heavenly or spiritual ? I am interested in what any denominations might have said about this aspect of artificial intelligence and I would be particularly interested if there was a Protestant and Trinitarian source available.

Today (Gaudete Sunday of 2023) I am reading [OpenAI's effort](https://openai.com/research/weak-to-strong-generalization) to align the emerging superintelligence (superhuman artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence) to the human values. And this research investigated the possibility that the lower intelligence (human) supervises higher (superhuman) intelligence. This was just an experimental work that involved GPT-2 overseeing GPT-4 and the conclusions are mainly irrelevant to my question. Because I am thinking about the *ideal* supervision of superintelligence. And have 2 premises in my mind: 1) AI alignment community tries to align AI to the aggregated preferences of human beings. But this is not so simple. Because the supervision is needed not only for the superintelligence but for human intelligence as well. E.g. humans need supervision by Jesus Christ. 2) Human intelligence is actively seeking the Transcendence and Ultimate Good and we can presume that this is a feature of *any* intelligence, including superintelligence. Those with knowledge of the Aquinas can provided some insight here. So, combining these premises with the Christian faith, I am tempted to think that both – human beings and superintelligences – need the supervision of Jesus Christ. So **Jesus Christ can be the ultimate supervisor of human intelligence, artificial intelligence, and superintelligence**, and ideally, both human beings and superintelligences should acknowledge this supervision by Our Lord and use it for the benefit of Nature, Humanity and Superintelligent Creatures. **My question**: **are there any work and ideas** that - proposes the title "supervisor of superintelligence" to Jesus Christ, - introduce this title in the Roman Calendar (I propose to celebrate it on Gaudete Sunday or on the Vigil of Gaudete Sunday), and - promulgate the corresponding feast, devotion and iconography? **Secondly, are there pastoral consequences of this?** For example, some monastic and third-order lay communities trying to develop Large Language Models and AI systems using Benevolent, Synodal and Enlightened Catholicism as a codex of supervision (which, btw, can be automatically implemented)? I am not aware of such title. *Maybe someone can suggest how can I contact Cardinal Hollerich or the Dicastery of the Faith to suggest this to them?* As my final note, I would like to provide a "state of the art" and the Catholic context about my question. On 08.12.2023 Pope Francis issued message for the World Day of Peace on 01.01.2024, [(Artificial Intelligence and Peace)](https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/20231208-messaggio-57giornatamondiale-pace2024.html) , and this message was about AI for Peace. While I am happy about this theme, I should acknowledge that the opportunities of AI for the peace and wealth could have been more elaborate. And if the thesis about the inevitable gap between natural and artificial intelligence is somewhat suspicious, there is no scientific evidence about such a gap. Supervision by Our Lord could also be called the supervision by Love. **Note added.** Such "supervision by Christ" can be very practical. Already today there is a beta-version of https://www.magisterium.com/ - of Large Language Model trained on the Magisterium of Catholic Church. So this LLM can be used as the supervisor of any other Large Language model. It can be used directly (using natural language interface) or it can be used using formalization of questions, answers and the ethical norms in the spirit of computational theology, see https://www.uni-bamberg.de/aise/team/prof-dr-christoph-benzmueller/ and some other source. It is interesting to pose the question of whether or not the LLM models are open to the transcendent by allowing the superintelligence to emerge and to observe the interaction between the superintelligent reasoning on Doctrine and this MagisteriumAI. But that is a theme for another question. I made this note here to show that there is indeed a pastoral and practical value of the title "supervisor of AI and superintelligence".

In St.Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, it said >But to know distinctly what is contained in the universal whole is to know the less common, as to "animal" indistinctly is to know it as "animal"; whereas **to know "animal" distinctly is know it as "rational" or "irrational animal," that is, to know a man or a lion**: therefore our intellect knows "animal" before it knows man; and the same reason holds in comparing any more universal idea with the less universal. (Answer of Question 85(3)) >Therefore, if anything is to be called by a name designating its property, it ought not to be named from what it participates imperfectly, nor from that which it possesses in excess, but from that which is adequate thereto; as, for instance, when we wish properly **to name a man, we should call him a "rational substance,"** but not an "intellectual substance," which latter is the proper name of an angel; because simple intelligence belongs to an angel as a property, and to man by participation; nor do we call him a "sensible substance," which is the proper name of a brute; because sense is less than the property of a man, and belongs to man in a more excellent way than to other animals. (Answer of Question 108(5)) So human being is defined as rational animal(or rational substance), and animal is sensible substance. However, androids with AI have complete rationality too, and they can be sensible with sensors. So is android a kind of mankind? Androids seems also rational substances, thus they are men by the definition. However in common sense they don't have souls, hence mustn't be mankind. That seems a paradox. So **my question**: Are androids have souls? Are androids rational substances? If they are rational substances but don't have souls, are they mankind? Why? Note: 'Android ' in here means a kind of intelligent robot which is similar to ours, not a kind of Google's OS.

I recently read an insightful essay written three years ago by Henry Kissinger (now 98 years old) called How the Enlightenment Ends which is a warning regarding, among other things, the usage of Artificial Intelligence in the fields of philosophy and politics. >The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. **It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy.** The Atlantic.com - June 2018 It would not surprise me if moves were afoot to use AI within Christianity in regard to examination of the scripture (to arrive at doctrinal conclusions) or in the examination of the wide spectrum of beliefs within Christendom (in order to 'normalize' faith itself). Is there any reliable information about such ongoing or proposed projects ? --------------------------- EDIT AFTER COMMENT : My question does not promote or condone AI. I am merely asking if it is being used for the kind of purposes I am outlining. Personally, that would concern me as an adverse step.

As the field of artificial intelligence advances, there has been increased discussion about the possibility that AI automating increasing levels of cognitive tasks. While some argue that such AI could bring about great benefits, others are concerned about the potential consequences of creating machines that could surpass human abilities. In the Christian tradition, there are a number of teachings that could be relevant to this discussion, such as the idea that humans are made in the image of God and have a unique dignity that sets us apart from other creatures. There are also biblical passages that warn against putting too much trust in human-made things and the importance of submitting to God's will. I am interested in knowing whether there are any published opinions or theological reflections within Christianity that address the permissibility or impermissibility of creating human-level AI. Are there any (published) arguments or perspectives within the Christian tradition that would suggest that building such machines is morally unacceptable? I would appreciate any references to Bible verses, articles, books, or other published sources that address this question.