Ninety-Eight Percent from the Machine

In June 2023, more than 300 people filled St. Paul's Church in Fürth, Germany, for a 40-minute service at a large Protestant church convention. The sermon, prayers, and music were all generated by ChatGPT and delivered by four avatars on a screen. The theologian who conceived it, Jonas Simmerlein of the University of Vienna, told the Associated Press that about 98% of it came from the machine; he had, in his own words, mostly accompanied it.

By technical measures it worked. The sermon spoke about leaving the past behind, facing the present, and not fearing death, and it hung together. But the reports afterward were consistent. The avatars' deadpan delivery drew laughter in the wrong places, especially when one told the congregation that to keep their faith they must pray and go to church regularly. One visitor said the AI lacked heart and soul, which made it hard to engage with the message.

I don't read that as a failure of the technology. I read it as an accidental experiment in what a gathered community is actually there for. I suspect people did not come for correct sentences about hope. They came, as people always have, to be in a room with other people who mean it.

That is the argument underneath my book: AI's first job is not to do the mission. It is to make room for the mission, to take the administrative and preparatory weight off the people whose presence is the mission, so they can show up to it with more of themselves. A sermon assembled by a machine tells you what the machine can do. A pastor with three more hours, because the machine handled the scheduling, tells you what it is for.

From Dancing in the Wind: An Adaptive Leadership Framework in the Age of AI.

What in your work is the presence, and what is only the preparation?