What one Finnish church learned from creating a service almost entirely with AI
A tale of good versus evil played out on the large screen in the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Finland. Jesus was shown in robes with long hair and a beard, while Satan was dressed in more modern clothes but with a menacing frown and higher-pitched voice — all created by artificial intelligence.
Also addressing the flock at the Tuesday evening service were avatars of the church’s pastors and a former president of Finland who died in 1986, reading from the Old Testament.
It was the first church service in Finland put together mostly by AI tools, which wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the music and created the visuals.
This seems to highlight what may turn out to be one of the negative aspects of AI, its artificiality. AI could become many things, the possibilities are vast, but it could also cast a strange shroud of disappointing artificiality over what was previously human, valued and part of our civilization.
We grow up in our feverish, artificial civilization, believing that the real, satisfying things are complex and difficult to obtain. Our lives become unnaturally stressed and tormented by the pitiless and incessant struggle for social conditions which are, at best, second-rate and ultimately disappointing.
Arthur F. Thorn
6 comments:
"Oi, ChatCockney, did the Exodus happen?"
"Strike a light, mite, wot you fink? Not in a million years."
"one of the negative aspects of AI, its artificiality"
Look at the ads on fleabay - the AI generated descriptions are samey, awful, stick out like sore thumbs and are just as attractive.
You might argue that recent music, films and television programmes already achieve a disappointing artificiality without using any AI at all. I'd blame it on the stultifying social consensus - and that is the source for training AI models too.
dearieme -
"Oi, ChatCockney, wot abaat that old book yer can't talk abaat?"
"Strike a light, mite, I ain't goin' there."
Jannie - I haven't seen them, we don't use fleabay much these days. The Amazon AI product summaries are quite good as a distillation of the reviews.
DJ - yes that's a good point and AI could make it worse as presumably it can only be trained on what is available.
Why do I get the impression that in this application, AI will turn out to be a load of bollocks?
Tammly - that's my impression too, not human enough, too vivid, too similar to cinema.
Post a Comment