The Gospel in the Age of AI

I’m just thinking about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on the message of Jesus Christ and Christianity. Will the Gospel be preached by chatbots or even full-fledged robots and androids? When Jesus spoke about the Gospel being preached to the ends of the earth, did he foresee that bots will take over from human messengers at some point? Will our theological seminaries and Bible schools be staffed by robots and AI? Will sentient Christian robots pastor our churches, better than human Christians at exegesis and sound doctrine?

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Might bots with access to billions of data repositories and advisories (some, maybe most, generated by bots themselves) be better pastoral counselors than ordinary men and women burdened with their own weaknesses?

Does anyone have plans to create a Christian bot? I mean a bot created and trained to be Christian in nature and bearing, one commissioned by an ecumenical Church or by independent denominations or ministries? Or by just some dude? What if the Catholic Church, for example, decides to throw her vast resources into creating a Catholic Bot or even a Pope Bot? I mean no disrespect, this is just to illustrate my point. (Now, I’m thinking, could a bot become a political leader — a governor, a president at some point? That can be explained too. It’s a line of imagination that ca be pondered, too.)

Will born-again bots and virtual agents preach on our mobiles and various screens everywhere soon?

Will the incidence or eventuality of a hive mind — a global or even universal pool of intelligence first facilitated by humans and scaled up by robots make it easier to spread the Word effectively? Or will the end of the world prophesied by Jesus occur at the instant it becomes possible to be able to transmit, unhindered by any firewalls, the Good News to every device, screen, and person in the universe? Or perhaps, a super-powerful Christian bot will be the ultimate messenger and harbinger of the Rapture?

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