Religion, Theology, and Philosophical Skills of LLM–Powered Chatbots Cover Image

Religion, Theology, and Philosophical Skills of LLM–Powered Chatbots
Religion, Theology, and Philosophical Skills of LLM–Powered Chatbots

Author(s): Marcin Trepczyński
Subject(s): Epistemology, Logic, Religion and science , Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science
Published by: Fakultet filozofije i religijskih znanosti, Sveučilište u Zagrebu
Keywords: large language models; chatbots; testing; philosophical skills; religion; theology; interpretation; reasoning;

Summary/Abstract: In this study, I demonstrate how religion and theology can be useful for testing the performance of LLMs or LLM–powered chatbots, focusing on the measurement of philosophical skills. I present the results of testing four selected chatbots: ChatGPT, Bing, Bard, and Llama2. I utilize three examples of possible sources of inspiration from religion or theology: 1) the theory of the four senses of Scripture; 2) abstract theological statements; 3) an abstract logic formula derived from a religious text, to show that these sources are good materials for tasks that can effectively measure philosophical skills such as interpretation of a given fragment, creative deductive reasoning, and identification of ontological limitations. This approach enabled sensitive testing, revealing differences among the performances of the four chatbots. I also provide an example showing how we can create a benchmark to rate and compare such skills, using the assessment criteria and simplified scales to rate each chatbot with respect to each criterion.

  • Issue Year: 25/2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 19-36
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: English
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