The Pope is asking priests not to use ChatGPT to write their sermons

Artificial intelligence may hallucinate from time to time and make things up, but there is one thing it does quite well: prepare texts from a base. Although the results depend greatly on what you ask for in your prompt, it is great for writing to the OTA about a fine they have given you or making a summary of photosynthesis. And why not: also to explain a parable from the Bible to you grounding it to everyday reality. A sermon from the old priest, come on. Well no.

I’m not saying it, he says it the current Pope of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church Leo XIV. A few days ago, the Augustinian religious was at a meeting with the clergy of the diocese of Rome and there he remembered the technology, issuing a warning to anyone who is tempted to entrust homilies to AI because “to make a true homily, which is sharing the faith, the AI ​​will never be able to share the faith.”

That is to say, although language models undoubtedly have the capacity to smooth out the readings of the Bible to bring them down to Earth, bringing them closer to everyday life, one thing is explain the earthly and quite another is providence. In short, spirituality is an exclusive quality of humans and not machines.

Perhaps it could help the church staff precisely to select readings from the long list offered by the book par excellence of Christianity and to synthesize what is important so that later they are the ones who, in their own handwriting (it is a way of speaking), write the sermon in the old-fashioned way.

What the Pope says goes to mass

In any case, Robert Francis Prevost continued with statements that align with science: “like all the muscles in the body, if we don’t use them, if we don’t move them, they die, the brain needs to be usedso our intelligence, your intelligence, must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity” because the exercise of searching the Bible, reading thoroughly and staying with what is important is undoubtedly a mental exercise that, if not done, reduces mental exercise.

Another part of his speech was directed at the use of mobile phones and that current paradox of being more connected and more alone than ever, ensuring that there is no human contact and that another type of friendship experience must be sought to establish bonds.

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