17/09/2019
Robot priests can bless you, advise you, and even perform your funeral.๐๐ผ
A new priest named Mindar is holding forth at Kodaiji, a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. Like other clergy members, this priest can deliver sermons and move around to interface with worshippers. But Mindar comes with some ... unusual traits. A body made of aluminum and silicone, for starters.
Mindar is a robot.
Designed to look like Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy, the $1 million machine is an attempt to reignite peopleโs passion for their faith in a country where religious affiliation is on the decline.
For now, Mindar is not AI-powered. It just recites the same preprogrammed sermon about the Heart Sutra over and over. But the robotโs creators say they plan to give it machine-learning capabilities thatโll enable it to tailor feedback to worshippersโ specific spiritual and ethical problems.
โThis robot will never die; it will just keep updating itself and evolving,โ said Tensho Goto, the templeโs chief steward. โWith AI, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles. Itโs changing Buddhism.โ
Robots are changing other religions, too. In 2017, Indians rolled out a robot that performs the Hindu aarti ritual, which involves moving a light round and round in front of a deity. That same year, in honor of the Protestant Reformationโs 500th anniversary, Germanyโs Protestant Church created a robot called BlessU-2. It gave preprogrammed blessings to over 10,000 people.
Then thereโs SanTO โ short for Sanctified Theomorphic Operator โ a 17-inch-tall robot reminiscent of figurines of Catholic saints. If you tell it youโre worried, itโll respond by saying something like, โFrom the Gospel according to Matthew, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.โ
Roboticist Gabriele Trovato designed SanTO to offer spiritual succor to elderly people whose mobility and social contact may be limited. Next, he wants to develop devices for Muslims, though it remains to be seen what form those might take.
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