Organized by the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality of Kotor, in the portico of the Church of St. Nicholas in the Old Town of Kotor, priest Dr. Oliver Subotić, head of the Missionary Department of the Archbishopric of Belgrade-Karlovac, yesterday (Saturday, July 26) gave a lecture entitled "Facing the Challenge of Artificial Intelligence: A View from an Orthodox Perspective".
The attendees were greeted by the Archbishop's Vicar of Kotor-Tivat, the parish priest of Kotor, Archpriest Stavrophor Nemanja Krivokapić, announcing the guest who spoke on the current topic and his visit 27. 07. in Tivat.
F. After presenting the history of the emergence of artificial intelligence, Oliver Subotić said that Orthodox Christians today should support those people who are professionally engaged in areas aimed at civilizational advancement, especially initiatives to establish clear control mechanisms.
“The biggest problem is that most people focus their attention on external dangers and challenges and on what is happening outside, and do not realize that something very, very deeply is changing inside us and that this is where the greatest danger actually lies. When it comes to this issue, Orthodox Christianity can make the greatest contribution,” said Fr. Oliver.
Speaking about the phenomenon and uncritical attitude towards the logic of social networks, he said that people there give their data “from the heart,” that is, no one has to ask them for it.
“They took pictures wherever they went, posted their pictures, everyone could know where everyone was, who they were hanging out with, what they were doing… In other words, no one had to monitor anyone. People gave their data to others “on their own accord”,” said Fr. Oliver, emphasizing that people had not learned to cultivate a culture of privacy, so surveillance on completely different grounds proliferated.
He recalls 2004, when the first case of internet addiction was recorded in Finland, as well as the opening of the first clinic the following year in China, and then a few years later in Belgrade.
“Today we are in a situation where we have so many children who have this problem. And not only that. We have an addiction to video games, to the need to put something on their profile every day, an addiction to the number of “likes” on a post. I call it likechoholism. If you don't have enough likes, you fall into depression," said Father Oliver.
Similar to Hitler's strategy of bypassing the Maginot Line and soon after the capitulation of France, the same thing, he continues, is happening today in the field of artificial intelligence.
"People are paying attention to external challenges, security, legal, technical... They put in place various declarations, legal acts, security mechanisms, protocols, which is necessary but, as mathematicians would say, not enough. Why? Because it is only the defense of our external spaces, environments, and our internal ones are already under the occupation of these systems because we treat them uncritically. Artificial intelligence bypasses all these mechanisms, and goes where we never expected it," said Father Oliver.
The first to be hit is our attention, which, as he said, is now significantly broken, fragmented, and scattered, especially among the younger generations.
“Since 1996, when one percent of children suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, we are now at 80 or even 90 percent and children have to be given tablets. The reason is that we did not notice the moment when electromagnetic technology, ecranocracy, took over their inner world, broke their attention to the point that they were unable to read three or four pages of a book with absolute attention. What was it like for us to read 20 pages at once,” concludes Father Oliver.
Another thing that is at risk, he points out, are emotions, which are increasingly superficial today, so using “chat-bot” solutions, such as replicas, software can also be used to set up a woman who suits them.
“Man is escaping from the real world and creating some emotional connections with the machine. There are many such deviations and there will be more and more of them,” says Fr. Oliver, noting that true communication, which is constructive, always requires a feat.
The third problem is the blow to our identity.
“The first next trend that awaits us is fusion, the merging of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and social networks… Artificial intelligence algorithms will generate communication with virtual people. It is estimated that in such a virtual world there will be a billion people in a year. In other words, these are the largest migrations in the history of mankind. We are migrating to a world that does not actually exist and fleeing from one in which it does not function,” said Fr. Oliver.
He emphasizes that we face enormous challenges and that such conversations exist in order to establish some kind of control mechanisms and somehow function properly in that world, and the microsocial aspect is the aspect where the Orthodox can make their greatest contribution.
“I also think that the Synod of each Church should have its own commission that would, within the framework of a social concept, give its official response to the phenomena of artificial intelligence, so that believers would have some kind of practical recommendations.

Secondly, we need to give a precise set of habits, e.g. what habits should parents have with their children at home when it comes to screens," said Fr. Oliver, adding that we are in trouble if in the morning, when we wake up, we first pick up the phone, instead of crossing ourselves, washing our hands...
The initiative of our guest, Fr. Oliver Subotić, who advocates for the establishment of parenting schools that would include priests, educators, psychologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists, was greeted with applause by those present.
The third aspect where Orthodoxy should provide a key answer, he further indicated, is the energy of the mind, which is finer and more subtle than the energy of the brain.
"Just as the saints opened their mental eye through prayer, with the mental (noetic) energy that God gave them to see into the reality that we often do not see, let us gather our minds, bring it back to ourselves, hold it in prayer, let us lower it into the heart where it belongs. When a person achieves this, he has absolutely no problem functioning in modern civilization, because he is then a sovereign person. He uses every kind of technology as a sovereign master”, said among other things Fr. Oliver Subotić.
You can watch the video from last night's lecture in the portico of the Church of St. Nicholas at the link: ПРЕДАВАЊЕ О.ОЛИВЕРА СУБОТИЋА О ИЗАЗОВИМА ВЈЕШТАЧКЕ ИНТЕЛИГЕНЦИЈЕ ИЗ ПРАВОСЛАВНЕ ПЕРСПЕКТИВЕ - YouTube