AI Avatars: Bridging faith and technology with Jesus and a management guru
A round-up of news and views about Artificial Intelligence from this week, including AI avatars of a Japanese management guru—and Jesus Christ
Slow and steady
In the wake of ChatGPT's dramatic arrival two years ago, companies are excited about generative AI's possibilities but heading into 2025 with careful deliberation rather than rushing to transform their operations, wrote AFP in an analytical story. The Channel Tunnel, one of the world's most strained travel checkpoints, presents a compelling example of AI's current limitations and practical applications. Each day, 400 of the world's largest locomotives cross the tunnel linking France and Britain, with nearly 11 million rail passengers and 2 million cars carried through annually. For GetLink, the company managing the 800-meter-long trains, caution around AI implementation remains paramount. Rather than controlling train operations, their AI primarily handles more mundane tasks like searching through rules and regulations.
The legal sector, initially viewed as prime for AI disruption, tells a similar story. While AI excels at basic tasks like searching legal databases and generating simple summaries, more complex work requires careful human oversight.
The tech industry presents a more aggressive adoption curve. Google reports that 25 percent of its coding is now handled by generative AI. JetBrains CEO Kirill Skrygan predicts that by next year, AI will handle about 75-80 percent of all coding tasks. Visual design industries, particularly fashion, are seeing significant impact from AI image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. These tools are already transforming work habits and shortening time-to-market for new collections.
In healthcare, despite a study showing AI's potential -including one where ChatGPT outperformed human doctors in diagnosis from case histories - practitioners remain hesitant to fully embrace the technology.
Still, the disruption caused by AI is coming hard and fast, and countries must be prepared. "White collar process work is hugely impacted, that's already happening. Call centers is already happening," Professor Susan Athey of Stanford University told a statistics conference at the IMF. Athey, an economist of the tech industry, expressed worry about regions where a core profession such as call centers risked being swept away by AI. "Those are ones I would really watch very carefully. Any country that specializes in call centers, I'm very concerned about that country," she said.
Japanese 'god of management' back as AI avatar
Japanese firm Panasonic has brought back the "God of Management" in AI avatar form, ready to answer all your business questions, reports AFP. Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, remains one of Japan's most revered entrepreneurs even 35 years after his death aged 94 in 1989. Panasonic's website even has a list of quotations from Matsushita with words of wisdom on everything from "Do it now" to "Biding your time".
Panasonic said it created the AI avatar "based on the vast amount of recorded speech and audio data from Matsushita's writings, speeches and dialogues". The purpose is to "explore and enlighten his philosophy and pass it on to the next generation", the electronics company said in a press release on Wednesday. Responding to a demo question on whether living a good life meant living long, AI Matsushita said: "The secret to a good life is to remember the spirit of youth, to be lively and full of hope."
Matsushita, then 24, founded the firm that would become Panasonic in his two-storey house in Osaka in 1918, producing innovative connectors and two-way sockets.
Pioneering electronic appliances from rice cookers to batteries to video recorders, Panasonic became a global titan with Matsushita making the cover of Time magazine in 1962.
And now, ‘AI Jesus’
Would you trust an “AI Jesus” with your innermost thoughts and troubles?
Researchers and religious leaders on Wednesday released findings from a two-month experiment through art in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland, where an avatar of “Jesus” on a computer screen — tucked into a confessional — took questions by visitors on faith, morality and modern-day woes, and offered responses based on Scripture, AP reports.
The idea, said the chapel’s theological assistant, was to recognize the growing importance of artificial intelligence in human lives, even when it comes to religion, and explore the limits of human trust in a machine.
After the two-month run of the “Deus in Machina” exhibit at Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne starting in late August, some 900 conversations from visitors –- some came more than once –- were transcribed anonymously. Those behind the project said it was largely a success: Visitors often came out moved or deep in thought, and found it easy to use.
A small sign invited visitors to enter a confessional -– chosen for its intimacy –- and below a lattice screen across which penitent believers would usually speak with a priest, a green light signaled the visitor's turn to speak, and a red one came on when “AI Jesus” on a computer screen on the other side was responding.
Often, a lag time was needed to wait for the response – a testament to the technical complexities. After exiting, nearly 300 visitors filled out questionnaires that informed the report released Wednesday.
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First Published:30 Nov 2024, 02:00 PM IST
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