Robots priests are now appearing in religion

There’s SanTO – short for Sanctified Theomorphic Operator – a huge robot reminiscent of Catholic saints that responds to expressions of concern with gospel verses. And there’s also Pepper, a robot you can hire in China to perform funeral rites if you can’t afford a human priest.

Whilst the practical benefits of using robots in religion are quite similar to the practical benefits of using robots anywhere else in society – they’re programmable and can solve issues of access – the new tech is making some uncomfortable. Siliconizing spirituality might not be so much of an issue in Japan where so much of the country is already mechanised, however westerners are more disturbed by the idea.

As this article from The Washington Post explicates, many see it as a Frankenstein-like attempt to impart human characteristics on some deux-ex imitation of personhood. Put simply, people are uncomfortable.

And it’s kind of easy to see why. Abrahamic religions like Islam and Judaism, and to a certain extent Christianity, have much more of an inherent divide between the sacred and the profane. In these faiths, there’s that which is holy, such as a priest’s divine link to God, and that which is inherently Earthly and irreverent, like a robot. Also, we’re just not quite as used to things that look like humans but aren’t.

In religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, however, often the act of worship is more important than the intentionality behind it. Some Buddhists use prayer wheels containing sacred words and believe that spinning the wheel will have its own spiritual power. In Western religions, the consternation of personal revelation is a huge part of worship.

Still, this isn’t to say that more religions couldn’t incorporate AI in the future. Once AI starts becoming more of a fundamental part of our everyday lives, the pure usefulness of robotic clergymen might outweigh our squeamishness. The intrigue of a robot priest could also get disinterested people curious about religion, or allow for a ritual to be performed where a human priest is inaccessible.

But the incorporation of machines into faith is in some ways ironic. If humans create intelligent machines with free will, we’ll eventually have to ask whether they have something functionally similar to a soul.

‘There will be a point in the future when these free-willed beings that we’ve made will say to us: I believe in God. What do I do? At that point, we should have a response’ says Kevin Kelly, a Christian co-founder of Wired magazine. Moreover, how do we differentiate between ‘creator’ and ‘god’ in the case of a robot?

AI systems can be particularly problematic in that they often function kind of like black boxes. We typically don’t know what sorts of biases are coded into them or what sorts of human nuance and content they’re failing to understand. This wouldn’t make them ideal figures of confession or religious advice – at least while AI remains something that is programmed by humans.

Moreover, there’s a sense of human connection and spontaneous emotion about religion that would likely be lost if it was mechanised.

According to Ilia Delio, a Franciscan sister with two PhDs and a chair in theology at Villanova University, it might not necessarily be a combative scenario between humans and robots in the church. As she puts it, ‘we tend to think in an either/or framework: it’s either us or the robots. But this is about partnership, not replacement. It can be a symbiotic relationship’.

Ultimately, like most things related to AI the ‘what ifs’ are plentiful as the potential of the tech is completely unknown. But, in religion as in other domains, robots and humans are perhaps best understood not as competitors, but collaborators.