Visitors were invited to pose questions to the AI Jesus, viewed on a monitor behind a latticework screen. (Courtesy of the Catholic Church of the City of Lucerne, CC BY) This autumn, a Swiss Catholic ...
Opinion

A Future for Confession

In “The Guilty Vicarage,” an essay on detective fiction, W.H. Auden argues that the most successful detective novels take place in an apparent Eden (the cozy village, the ivied college, the country ...
Confession, the Catholic and Orthodox practice of listing one’s sins in the presence of a priest who then offers absolution and is sworn to secrecy under pain of eternal damnation, has long been a ...
Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross This hologram of Jesus Christ on a screen was animated by an artificial intelligence program. The AI’s programming included ...
This autumn, a Swiss Catholic church installed an AI Jesus in a confessional to interact with visitors. The installation was a two-month project in religion, technology and art titled "Deus in Machina ...