Vicars, Bishops and other members of the clergy are being threatened by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a study has found.
Clergy members, who have withstood the test of time through multiple wars and the separation of the church and state, could now have their jobs taken from them by Chatbots.
A Department for Education study examining the impact of systems such as ChatGPT on the jobs market, and it revealed that men of the cloth are in the top 20 professions most likely to be impacted by the technology.
The study looked at which skills are used in each job, and assessed how easily they could be replicated by AI.
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Clergy members were ranked as the 13th out of 365 professions that were likely to be impacted by AI.
Real-world examples of AI being used to replicate church members have already begun to emerge.
In June, 300 people listened to an AI-generated avatar who delivered a sermon at a German church.
Elsewhere, vicars and rabbis have already admitted to using Chatbots to help them write their sermons.
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The former head of the Church of Scotland, the Very Rev Albert Bogle, has spoken highly of the technology but has argued that it cannot do what “humans do in an act of worship”. Other studies have found congregations are unlikely to accept robot preachers.
Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur, Anthony Levandowski, has launched an AI church called Way of the Future.
He said he wants to create a spiritual connection between humans and the ever-growing technology.
The Department of Education (DfE) have speculated that between 10 and 30 per cent of existing jobs will be impacted by AI.
ChatGPT and other chatbots have already begun being implemented in the workplace
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At the top of the list of professions at risk form “large language models” are Telephone salespersons.
The clergy was nestled between local government administration occupations, and higher education teaching professionals, at 12th and 14th place respectively.
At the bottom of the list, in 365th place, are forklift drivers.
The DfE said new jobs will be able to take advantage of the new technology, but existing roles would need to adapt to provide more training with the large language models.
ChatGPT and other chatbots have already begun being implemented in the workplace, raising concerns about the future of AI in the workplace.
