A small chapel in Poland is merging faith with technology through an AI-powered altar that offers guidance and prayers via voice recognition. Its creator, Father Radek Rakowski, says his goal is to meet the needs of parishioners in a changing world.
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00:00With a tap on their smartphone, parishioners can unlock the doors and turn on the lights
00:10using just an app.
00:12This isn't your typical church.
00:14This small chapel in Poznan, Poland is meeting the future, inviting people to connect not
00:20just with the Almighty, but also with the algorithm.
00:25Could you please tell me what Jesus Christ tells us about love?
00:30Please tell me in English.
00:34Jesus Christ emphasized the importance of love in his teachings.
00:38You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.
00:42At the heart of the chapel is an artificial intelligence-powered altar equipped with voice recognition.
00:51Parishioners can simply ask their questions and receive answers by AI within seconds,
00:57drawn from a vast library of trusted knowledge.
01:01Artificial intelligence is trained not only on popular science texts,
01:07but also on books and newspapers available on the Internet,
01:13as well as on the Bible and the Catholic Codex.
01:18The idea for this chapel came from local priest Radek Rakowski.
01:23At first, Father Rakowski just planned to build a traditional church,
01:28but with regular attendance at mass declining sharply across Poland in recent years,
01:33he wanted to make faith more accessible in the digital age.
01:38Christians are not aliens or people from the Middle Ages,
01:43so we can't remain the only institution excluded from society
01:48that still uses goose feathers, squids and books.
01:54Father Rakowski says the goal is to meet the needs of parishioners in a changing world.
02:00The chapel offers space for prayer, connection and guidance 24 hours a day.
02:06Visitors can ask questions they might hesitate to bring up face-to-face.
02:11Father Rakowski believes the AI system can provide direct, objective answers
02:17because a priest may not have all the information they need at hand.
02:21This is amazing, because we don't want to make up facts to attract people or deceive them,
02:29but we give them the knowledge to become free people, because knowledge is freedom.
02:35As the chapel welcomes more visitors,
02:38Father Rakowski hopes it can offer a glimpse of what religions in the modern age could look like,
02:44operating on a ping and a prayer.
02:47Alex Chen and Billy Wu for Taiwan Plus
02:51www.taiwanplus.com