Now Hearing Your Confession
It was only a matter of time: A chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland has a new clergy member hearing confessions: AI Jesus.
Simply enter the confessional, press a button and pour your heart out — in question form — to the AI Jesus listening on the other side of the screen.
Observes writer Natasha Lomas: “The tech, developed at the local university, is described by the chapel’s theologian as an experiment intended to spark discussion.
“He points out one advantage: AI can be available 24/7, unlike human pastors.”
Mercy me.
In other news and analysis on AI writing this week:
*In-Depth Guide: Easy Peasy Tutorial on How To Build AI Agents With Microsoft: Fans of Microsoft Copilot — a ChatGPT competitor — who are looking for an easy way to start building agents can find an extremely clear, lucid tutorial at this link.
Heralded as AI’s Next Big Thing for 2025, agents are like AI employees that you design to fill familiar work roles such as receptionists, research assistants, customer service representatives — and virtually every other work role you can imagine.
Their secret sauce: Once programmed, these AI employees can work autonomously for you in the work roles you assign them, 24/7, sans supervision.
Even better, once you create your agent, you can share it for use with colleagues using Microsoft products by simply sending them a link to the agent.
*First Take on the Claude Chatbot’s New AI Agent Builder: Not Bad: A new study finds that the new agents — or AI employees — that you can build with ChatGPT-competitor Claude are working fairly well.
Observes writer Ben Dickson: “In general, Claude did a great job of carrying out complex tasks.
“It was able to reason and plan multiple steps needed to carry out a task, perform the actions and evaluate its progress every step of the way.”
“However, it also tends to make trivial mistakes that average human users would easily avoid.”
Stay tuned.
*Google Joins the AI Agents Arms Race: Apparently also convinced that global business will not be able to get enough of building AI employees once they get the hang of it, AI titan Google has joined the AI agent fray.
Dubbed ‘AI Agent Space,’ Google’s own agent ecosystem was designed to enable businesses to “discover, deploy,and co-create AI agents designed to automate tasks, enhance customer experiences and optimize operations,” according to writer Carl Franzen.
“Google’s marketplace model ensures that businesses can choose from a variety of pre-built agents or work with partners to create custom solutions and optimize operations,” Franzen adds.
*Google Gemini’s New Memory for Your Preferences: Even Better Than Your Nosy Bestie?: Select users of ChatGPT-competitor Google Gemini can now tweak the AI chatbot to remember certain facts to ensure the AI engages with a more informed frame-of-reference.
Observes writer Kyle Wiggers: “Like ChatGPT’s memory, Gemini’s adds context to the current conversation.
“For example, tell Gemini to remember foods you like and the next time you ask the bot for restaurant recommendations, it might tailor its suggestions to your culinary leanings.”
*ChatGPT on Your Windows Desktop Free: Like Clippy, But With Attitude: Even free users of ChatGPT can now put the AI on their Windows desktop now — saving them the bother of logging-in via browser.
Already available to paying users of ChatGPT for a few months now, the desktop app works with Windows 10 and Windows 11 and is available for download.
Observes writer Lance Whitney: “I tried it once with my subscriber account and again with a free-tier account and the program launched just fine both ways.”
*English Teacher Goes Full ChatGPT, Chaucer Turns Over in His Grave: While student use of ChatGPT promises to remain hotly debated for the foreseeable future, at least one English teacher has decided she’s all-in.
San Diego high school teacher Jen Roberts reasons that students need in-depth experience with AI like ChatGPT, given that many employers are now demanding AI skills.
Observes Roberts: “I saw the influence in their writing when they were getting that immediate feedback (from AI on their writing).
“The growth was tremendous. Their engagement was higher.”
*AI-Written Police Reports: Speedy, Slick — And Slightly Suspect?: It appears that police reports agonizingly typed with the hunt-and-peck method are going the way of the Dodo bird.
Increasing numbers of police departments across the U.S. are turning the task over to AI chatbots instead, according to writer Barbara Booth.
Observes Booth: “Police officers have been impressed by the results, drafting reports in as little as 10 seconds.
“Yet legal experts are raising concerns over accuracy, transparency and potential bias — challenges that could significantly shape the future of AI both in policing and in the courtroom.”
*For Many Young Pros, Success Now Runs on Algorithms: A new study finds that ambitious young workers — 22-to-39-year-olds who are leaders or aspire to be leaders at work — have enthusiastically embraced AI.
Specifically, 82% of those workers are already using AI at work.
And 98% of them believe AI will have a significant impact on their workplace or industry in five years.
*AI Big Picture: Expert: AI Needs A Seat At Trump’s Table: AI expert Gary Marcus says that without cabinet-level representation for AI in President-Elect Trump’s administration, we’ll simply be rolling the dice and hoping for the best.
Observes Marcus: “The nature of these systems is that we can’t give them simple instructions and assume that they will follow them.
“If you tell them, ‘Don’t hallucinate,’ they’re still going to hallucinate.
“If you tell them, ‘Don’t do anything harmful’ or ‘Don’t recommend anything that’s harmful to humans,’ they still will.
“People have tried to build guardrails, but the guardrails are not very effective.”
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.