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On any given Sunday, churchgoers settle into pews and listen to a sermon. A member of the clergy uses text from the Bible and figures out what it has to say about our lives today, right? But how would you feel if you found out that sermon was written by artificial intelligence? Deena Prichep reports.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Writing and delivering sermons, homiletics if you're in the biz, is not an easy job.
NAOMI SEASE CARRIKER: It's like a mini research paper. You have to prepare every week, and some weeks, life is just a lot.
PRICHEP: Naomi Sease Carriker is pastor of Messiah of the Mountains Lutheran Church in North Carolina and recently had one of those weeks, so she popped open ChatGPT.
CARRIKER: And boom, literally within not even 30 seconds, I had a 900-word sermon. And I read through it, and I was like, oh, my God, this is really good.
PRICHEP: But she also thought...
CARRIKER: This feels wrong.
PRICHEP: It's an ethical question clergy across the country are wrestling with. When it comes to something like homework, the goal is students learning. So using AI can get in the way of that. But the goal of a sermon is basically to tell a story that can break open the hearts of people to a holy message. So does it matter where that comes from? Some denominations have issued general guidelines urging thought and caution, but they don't really mention specifics, given that the technology is changing so quickly. So clergy are left to figure it out themselves. Naomi Sease Carriker decided not to preach that AI sermon, but she does use the tech to get her draft started or wrap up what she's written with a nice conclusion, and that feels OK.
CARRIKER: Why not? Why can't and why wouldn't the Holy Spirit work through AI?
PAUL HOFFMAN: Do we want to give what's sacred over to bits of code and algorithms? My argument is no.
PRICHEP: Paul Hoffman is the pastor of Evangelical Friends Church in Rhode Island and author of the book "AI Shepherds And Electric Sheep."
HOFFMAN: In as much as AI helps humans flourish in the image of God, use it, but in as much as it may hinder human flourishing, it's best not to.
PRICHEP: How do you know which is which? Some clergy argue AI sermons not only draw on a wealth of sources, but also leave more time for pastoral care, to provide counsel, to sit at a bedside of someone who's dying, the sort of one-on-one relationships a computer can't touch. But Hoffman argues that sermons are actually part of those relationships.
HOFFMAN: Does AI know the stories of your people? Do they know about the miscarriage? Do they know about the divorce? Do they know about the abuse? How can an algorithm comprehend lived human experience?
PRICHEP: Obviously, it can't. But what if next year, it could? A lot of this debate is grappling with the question of whether AI is being used as a replacement for a sacred human project or whether it's a tool in the service of that project. Daniel Bogard is the rabbi of Central Reform Synagogue in St. Louis and has been teaching other rabbis how to use AI.
DANIEL BOGARD: I can sit and argue with AI over a text and understand it differently and better than I would on my own.
PRICHEP: There's a practice in Talmudic study called chavruta where study partners debate a text together to arrive at a deeper understanding.
BOGARD: But I would also say that when you're doing chavruta right, it's not really about understanding the text better. It's about understanding your partner better and understanding yourself better and understanding what it means to be a human being better.
PRICHEP: In addition to questions of religious ethics, there are other real problems with AI. It can be unreliable, fabricating entire biblical quotations. And many of the clergy we spoke with pointed to the huge environmental impact. It's also hard to answer questions about what could be gained or lost because things are changing so quickly.
BOGARD: But the core elements of what it means to be a human being have never changed. It has always been about, what does it mean to live only a handful of days? What does it mean to be in relationship with difficult human beings? And what does it mean to be a sibling or a child or a parent? And how do we navigate the messiness of life?
PRICHEP: This is a 3,000-year-old conversation about how we're supposed to spend our days. And if all those years have taught us anything, it's that this conversation will continue, whatever role AI ends up playing. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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