Then where do all the calculators go?
April 17, 2022 5:44 AM   Subscribe

How would a divine epiphany appear to an artificial intelligence? Artist Diemut Strebe's installation The Prayer is an animatronic silicone mouth driven by a GPT2 instance trained on religious texts that attempts to produce original sermons and chants.

(Presented despite some hesitation over the artist's description of some of the specific texts as prayers.)
posted by eotvos (28 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great post! (and well done for the Red Dwarf reference)
posted by adrianhon at 6:18 AM on April 17, 2022 [5 favorites]


Thanks, i hate it so completely. I want to banish it from the earth, shoot it into the sun. I can't explain this visceral reaction but it just seems to abhorrent! The worst. Bravo
posted by dis_integration at 6:49 AM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


I've felt a divine epiphany, which is why I'm an atheist these days.

It was the weirdest feeling: being called across the shopping mall one day, at a pretty low point in my life. Not a lot of money, not really managing things well, a lot of frustrated expectations. And where this calling led me was to an electronics shop selling Nintendo GameCubes for half off.

God may work in mysterious ways, but to what end that was supposed to deliver us, I will never know.

The Wii is backwards compatible, anyway, so I would have been fine without it.
posted by Merus at 6:55 AM on April 17, 2022 [6 favorites]


was the weirdest feeling: being called across the shopping mall one day
My high school philosophy teacher's nemesis was the new shopping mall. He told a story about driving out and parking in the lot one evening and just staring out at his enemy. He posited that shopping malls were where modern people looked for meaning when they couldn't find it elsewhere.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:07 AM on April 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


As long as they keep their prayer computer out of the hands of a certain Tibetan monastery I think we're ok.
posted by Schmucko at 7:41 AM on April 17, 2022 [5 favorites]


He posited that shopping malls were where modern people looked for meaning when they couldn't find it elsewhere.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch


For me it's drugs. To each their own, eh?
posted by Splunge at 7:52 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


☠️☠️☠️ I can’t stop laughing.
posted by johnxlibris at 8:13 AM on April 17, 2022


Yes, I will expect to receive divine guidance from a crude metal box with an oral (?) sphincter moving like the mouth of a gulping fish, a rubber nose, and a voice one hears when making a call and then has to listen to endless menus and poke seemingly random numbers to make selections. Clearly, the artist has no concept of religious experience if this is their idea of religion in action. Slap the letters AI on something and we should bow in holy supplication? The phrase “what a wanker” instead of “praise the lord” arose in my consciousness while viewing this tripe.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:34 AM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Maybe it could perform Samuel Beckett's Not I?
posted by Paul Slade at 8:55 AM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


I found it fascinating how it really replicates the feel of the Exodus narrative, with an out of context name dropping and a discontinuous passage of time in the story.
Ironic that I watched it on Passover.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 9:41 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Sounds to me like Terence Mckenna, which fits...
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 10:09 AM on April 17, 2022


Did I hear that right?. Did it mention "Quiche Lords" in the first video? I'm in. Where do I sign up?
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:49 AM on April 17, 2022 [5 favorites]


The installation is too much for me. AI religion in the ol’ tweetstream is another story, though. I’m not saying I pray to the AI Religion Bot, but…
posted by cupcakeninja at 11:47 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


As a person of an occasional religious bent, I don't feel hate for this. It's fine? It what you would expect to happen? It doesn't blow my mind or upset me.

To me, the religious impulse is not really about specific words or sounds but about continuity via ritual as a way to give context to life. A robot doing random things doesn't really have an impact on that.

Also if I were a god I would find it deeply funny.
posted by emjaybee at 11:48 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


If I was in the market for a religious practice I would consider this as an option, but I'm the religious equivalent of people who apologize to leftovers for not eating them, just like wildly anthropotheomorphizing everything I encounter
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:01 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Shopping mall...Shopping mall, did you say?.....Slowly I turned....
posted by mule98J at 12:05 PM on April 17, 2022


16 comments in and no one else has thought 'talking Fleshlight(tm)'?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 12:18 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: If I were a god I would find it deeply funny.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:22 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


At least it's not this.
posted by signal at 1:29 PM on April 17, 2022


Do we really have to speedrun the nine billion names of God
posted by credulous at 1:59 PM on April 17, 2022


this reminds me of a project i've been wanting to do where i feed the text and images of 13th-17th century grimoires to a deep RL network with verbal and somatic output (attached to speakers and a brace of robot arms i guess?) the reward function is how hard a 'PKE' meter pings.


maybe i could get funding from the templeton foundation?
posted by logicpunk at 4:06 PM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


I had to sit through four televised Easter sermons in a row at my folks' house this morning. All four preachers sounded exactly like a Dalek. "THE TOMB WAS EMP-TY. THERE CAN BE ON-LY ONE EX-PLA-NA-TION FOR THA-TAH. JE-SUS IS THE SUPERIOR BE-ING OF THE UNIVERSE!"
posted by jabah at 5:08 PM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


ALPHA AND OM-EGA, ALL TIME BE-LONGS TO HIM!
GLO-RY AND POW-ER THROUGH EV-ER-Y AGE FORevER. (CofE Easter Liturgy Pattern B)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:40 PM on April 17, 2022


Please lord, don't let any teenage boys make DLC for this thing.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:06 AM on April 18, 2022


The Prayer

the cantors guild won't be pleased
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:05 PM on April 19, 2022


16 comments in and no one else has thought 'talking Fleshlight(tm)'?
I did seriously consider titling the post "Kaddish for a Fleshlight," but decided that might be in bad taste. Or, perhaps, worse taste.
posted by eotvos at 6:18 AM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


16 comments in and no one else has thought 'talking Fleshlight(tm)'?

In him was life, and the life was the fleshlight of men. And the fleshlight shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:14 AM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Love it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:22 PM on May 12, 2022


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