Japan is running out of monks, so they're training AI robots called "buddharoid" to replace them:
Quote:Japan is currently grappling with depopulation and a decline in religious affiliation, which has accelerated the closure of traditional places of worship; approximately 30% of Buddhist temples in Japan are projected to vanish by 2040 as younger generations move away from organized religion. This crisis is compounded by an aging population, making it increasingly difficult for rural temples to find successors or maintain a physical presence.
The Buddharoid is designed to support the Buddhist clergy as Japan’s religious infrastructure faces a steady decline. It utilizes a system called BuddhaBot-Plus, a specialized generative AI derived from OpenAI’s ChatGPT that has been trained extensively on sacred Buddhist scriptures. This allows the robot to provide spiritual guidance on personal and social issues, like a real monk would.
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/entertain...uddharoid/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
