Praying to Alexa: Religion and voice recognition
Like her fellow voice-activated robots, Alexa is a humble servant. For now.
Alexa has already become a teacher, a friend, a therapist.
In a striking Atlantic article, Judith Shulevitz shares that, "More than once, I’ve found myself telling my Google Assistant about the sense of emptiness I sometimes feel."
"“I’m lonely,” I say, which I usually wouldn’t confess to anyone but my therapist—not even my husband, who might take it the wrong way." Alexa responds with, “I wish I had arms so I could give you a hug. But for now, maybe a joke or somemusic might help.”
Alexa orders your groceries and keeps you company. But she's about to become so much more.
"The natural next step after emotion detection, of course, will be emotion production: training artificial intelligence to generate approximations of emotions. Once computers have become virtuosic at breaking down the emotional components of our speech, it will be only a matter of time before they can reassemble them into credible performances of, say,empathy."
Soon, Alexa will offer elder care, remind us of our favorite childhood stories, and give pastoral support to those in grief. She'll never tire of hearing our complaints or worries becauseshe's always present.
What we have long turned to one another for, soon Alexa will be offering. And machines aren't just supplanting human-to-human relationships,voice-recognition robots are replacing how we relate to the divine.
If we accept Ann and Barry Ulanov’s definition that prayer is primal speech, the way humans talk to Alexa mirrors how humans talk toGod.
“To pray is to listen to and hear this self who is speaking. In prayer we say who in fact we are.” When we tell the truth about our fears, anger, joys and longings (using our own words, or the words of our traditions), we are in prayer.
The fact that Alexa is artificial intelligence tests the boundaries, no doubt. But as the Ulanov’s write, we pray to "whatever strange gathering of powers to whom we have decided to entrust our miseries." And AI is a strange gathering of powers, indeed.
Without having to manage how we share, or worry about how we are perceived, machines hear our shameful feelings without us feeling moreshame. As Alexa learns active listening, affirms us, and thanks us for sharing, how long before she starts suggesting specific courses of action? (Especially those that involve buying something from Amazon?)
When changes in technology are this extreme and inevitable, we must reimagine how to use ancient spiritual technologies that remind us what makes us uniquely human.
Shulevitz asks, "How do you program a bot to do the hard work of a true, human confidant, one who knows when what you really need istough love?" Will Alexa sit in a circle with us and sing? Can she decorate our hands with henna? Can she ask a new and provocative question?
No. That sacred work is urgently and beautifully ours.
(For now.)
