The Credibility and Authority of a Catholic AI

This Washington Post article describes a new AI application called Magisterium AI, a chatbot designed specifically for Catholics to answer questions related to Catholic policy and doctrine. Like the Econ 17 ClassChat chatbot, which is trained specifically on course documents, Magisterium AI is a chatbot that is trained on 27,000 Catholic documents. That way, its responses are grounded solidly in Church writings, unlike a more general chatbot like ChatGPT, which will pull from a variety of sources both in and out of the Church when providing responses.

There are multiple aspects of Magisterium AI of interest to us in this class. First of all, it represents a new kind of religious good—namely, a chatbot trained specifically for the members of a particular religious denomination. Individuals looking for an official Catholic answer to a religious question will find it convenient to ask the chatbot at any time of day instead of finding the right time and place to ask a knowledgeable person. It is not actually the first AI designed for Catholics; an earlier attempt had some pretty serious flaws.

Second, the creators of the chatbot are very concerned about the credibility of the app and the authoritativeness of the answers that it provides. They want the chatbot's answers to be trustworthy reflections of actual church teachings and policies, so they enlisted the help of two priests and a number of others to decide what to include in the set of training documents. Knowing this about a chatbot is important for many users. If a user wants a general answer that is not necessarily from a devout Catholic perspective, then a general chatbot like ChatGPT is a potentially good source, but if a user wants an answer that is ensured to be from a devout Catholic perspective, then Magisterium AI is a much better source.

Finally, the article explains that sometimes people do not want to talk to a priest or other human, and they appreciate the relative anonymity when interacting with an online source. Magisterium AI provides an option for these people.

I expect more denomination-specific chatbots to be developed. Patrick Green, a professor who was interviewed for the article, considered this proliferation of religious chatbots to be concerning. Perhaps, but we are already in a diverse world, and having chatbots with some degree of authoritativeness is beneficial for people who want to get credible answers. That is true for non-Catholics and Magisterium AI as well. Even non-Catholic users may want to know how a credible Catholic source answers questions.

The platform also demonstrates how religious groups can adapt to technological change while maintaining their core mission of providing authoritative guidance to their members. As religious competition intensifies in our pluralistic society, tools like Magisterium AI may become increasingly important for denominations seeking to serve their members effectively while preserving doctrinal integrity. Rather than viewing this trend with concern, we might see it as a natural evolution of how religious authority adapts to meet the needs of believers in an increasingly digital world.

[Note: I gave the Econ 17 ClassChat chatbot the first five paragraphs above that I wrote myself and asked it for a concluding paragraph. It gave me a two-paragraph conclusion. The first paragraph was not good, but the second one was. So, I used the second one here with only minor edits.]