In our now secularized Western society, we still have several spiritual and ethical assistants shared by different social groups. In the past, the need for a confidential interlocutor to whom one could confide one’s doubts and problems was satisfied, for example for Catholics, by the existence of a confessor. The role of priests and saints was then over time largely occupied by other figures, such as psychologists or influencers in social media.
If one of the main “user experiences” of generative AI is interacting with conversational interfaces, here we have found someone else to talk to. The privacy guarantees are not yet such that we can call AI a confidential confidant, but we may get there soon.
If we will agree to trust the results analyzed by computer vision for an oncological examination, knowing that these results will be far more reliable than those that a human physician with average competence could formulate, why might we not want to extend this trust to other personal and confidential areas? Thus, it is not entirely unthinkable to foresee the advent of AI-powered “spiritual assistants.”
But here is where this forcefully brings up again the issue regarding how we define the very nature of intelligence, or rather wisdom. We still wonder whether the artificial one will be able to match human intelligence or even human wisdom.
Italiano