Artificial Intelligence and Preaching the Word

Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region.  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.  When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,  and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

                            Luke 4:14-19 NRSVue

I've come to realize that my blog readers -- you -- are smart and informed, so of course you are well versed in the rapidly emerging field of artificial intelligence. Um, maybe you still have some catching up to do? I definitely don't know a lot about about AI's applications and I'm inclined not to care -- or at least that's what I think. The truth is that AI will do more and more of our thinking, even if we aren't aware that it's happening. 

There are now applications which simulate human conversation:

Artificial intelligence chatbots are chatbots trained to have human-like conversations using a process known as natural language processing (NLP). With NLP, the AI chatbot is able to interpret human language as it is written, which enables them to operate more or less on their own.

One of the current challenges in the academic world is that AI can be used to write essays with a sophistication which goes well beyond the "buy a paper online" racket or "cut and paste" plagarism. Colleges and universities are scrambling to keep up with this latest form of cheating.

We had lunch with a couple recently where she is a fairly active lay preacher. She mentioned that her tech savvy son-in-law pointed out to her that AI could help her write sermons. She found this amusing but he coaxed her to offer a subject and using a program called ChatGPT he came up with a credible message within minutes, which he tweaked on her suggestions. Voila. 

Plagarism by preachers has long been a reality but far more so in recent years. Some search committees for new ministers now submit phrases and passages from sermons offered as original material by prospective pastors and discover that they have been taken whole from other people's work. 

I've always found this mind-boggling. In all my years as a preacher I've never repeated one of my own sermons, although I have used personal stories and anecdotes or credited quotations from messages used in other congregations. I figure that reusing examples from my own life story ain't cheating. 

The argument that is often made by "borrowers" is that they are so busy with the demands of ministry, and there are certainly challenges in a profession which is unpredictable in what can unfold in any given week. I just can't fathom living with myself if I'd chosen this way out. 

Not only does cheating in writing a sermon go against everything I hold true about honesty and integrity, it also quenches creativity. As well, I have always figured that the Holy Spirit is at work in unique ways in each moment of our lives. The Spirit is ruach, breath, so even when it comes to my own writing and preaching a message will be "breathless", soulless, without the activity of the living God. Because I generally followed the ecumenical lectionary I was challenged along the way to preach passages of scripture which were challenging and required prayerful wrestling with the text. 

Here's the question: could decades of my sermons be uploaded to a chatbot to create  messages based on a blend of my own work? Probably. But would it be me if I then preached the homogenized outcome? 

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the senior pastor at New Season Christian Worship Center in Sacramento, California, appears as a hologram to preach to a church in New Zealand. (Screenshot credit: City Impact Church/Youtube)

I figure that holographic worship leaders can't be far off as an option for congregations. Actually, a quick search reveals that it's already happening. Every church can have a young, vibrant preacher who never goes on vacation! Don't feel comfortable with the content of the message? Reset the parameters and tweak the Gospel! 

Ah, what a brave new world.