AI, Ask Jesus Chatbot, Tutor and Podcast functions

[Dominick O]

I attended the UBLA Society's Thanksgiving event where Zoom attendees could listen to Robert Burns (and Gabriel Rymberg zooming from Israel at 3am).  Here is the blurb:


Robert Burns, will share The Center for Unity's AI program answer to this question: "What are some transformations of the mortal mind becoming spiritualized? Can you give me examples?” The Center for Unity's AI program uses only The Urantia Book as its source. At our Nov. 23 Thanksgiving Event, you can judge the AI program’s answer and offer other questions. Robert will take questions from the group, feed them to this “digital genius”, and see what kind of “cosmic wisdom” it discovers for us to discuss. This will be interesting; you won't want to miss it.



This portion lasted about 90 minutes, and we can get caught up in a lot of different roads of feedback so I'll just bullet point the significant takeaways. Some are a review and some are my own:

• There are some technical limitations in the Google and ChatGPT programs being used that the statement, "uses only The Urantia Book as its source," needs a large asterisk* by it. For example, there are times when the program(s) utilize sources within the tool that are available from the wider internet. There are multiple tools and features presented and available and it's confusing just what is being strictly pulled with the UB as an only source.
• There are some amazing features that are good for summarizing contents and subjects in the UB that would get a person interested in reading it. But it is no substitute for actually reading it. Why? Because AI is not revelation, and it will never substitute actual revelation.
• The example in point, is Robert used the question to AI to discuss the role of Adversity and Uncertainty. The ChatGPT produces the internet standard of 5th-6th grade summary. For example, most successful YouTube videos with millions of views tend to have the same level of speech. The more advance AI "tutor" functions presented more complex statement structures.
• Both summaries gave some warm platitudes to character growth, but there was not one mention of soul or faith. The obvious warning here, is that AI is a down-step from the teachings these projects want to promote.

TODAY's FOOD FOR THOUGHT: CONCLUSION-CONTENTION-THESIS

• The Teaching Mission and current transmission programs did foresee the coming of AI. It has produced several million (maybe 10-100 million words in total aggregate?) words from diverse and multiple sources on subjects that would fit a database for an AI to pull from.
• There will still be the poison of the Lucifer Rebellion to navigate as various perspectives are conditioned to distrust the devil's machinations in the mischief of the mind with transmissions, or the Atheist Transhumanist Technocracy of AI.