The future is already here: Iranian authorities think AI could… issue fatwas more effectively

Contrary to what one might think, Iranian leaders live well with the times as evidenced by the recent cyberattack of Charlie Hebdo. But, obviously, it doesn’t stop there.

At least that’s what the Financial Times, to which some theocracy officials reportedly explained that the country was seeking to modernize its religious institutions. Thus, the State encourages familiarization with new technologies provided, of course, that this respects the rules decreed by Ayatollah Khamenei.

The latter himself seems very interested in the subject of artificial intelligence, for which he wants his country to be one of the world leaders. This technology is far from being new in the country which has a development laboratory in this area. Iran also reportedly used it on a large scale to suppress 2022 protests in response to the death of Mahsa Amini.

Automate fatwas

Mohammad Ghotbi, the head of an Iranian tech business incubator, is very enthusiastic about artificial intelligence. He also makes a speech similar to that which we can hear among Westerners: “ robots cannot replace experienced workers, but they can play the role of assistants “. We have already seen the reality of this statement.

The best example he can give regarding the interest of this technology on the country’s affairs concerns the famous fatwas. Because the traditional process requires clergy to go through thousands of pages of religious texts to determine whether or not the person concerned should be condemned. A process which generally lasts around fifty days. But according to Ghotbi, artificial intelligence can reduce this time to barely 5 hours. Progress is truly underway.

This surprising use of AI also recalls the story of this American lawyer who instructed ChatGPT to prepare his indictment files… and who bit his fingers afterwards.

Iran wants to become one of the world leaders in AI

AI is not exactly a newcomer to Iran: during the huge protests that shook the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, facial recognition was also reportedly used on a large scale to identify protesters who had the audacity to show their hair. But above all, the country has a fairly advanced laboratory on the issue.

According to the FT, the country’s main AI laboratory, the Noor computer center for research in Islamic sciences, works in partnership with a religious seminary in the holy city of Qom, and is notably trained thanks to the extensive archives of texts religious. This can perhaps produce an effective AI, but given the corpus, we can imagine that it is very different from ChatGPT and other chatbots that we know.

All this, of course, is only made possible because Ali Khamenei himself is very enthusiastic about the issue. He even said he would like his country to be at least among the 10 world leaders in AI. Provided of course that its development respects the principles of Islam.

Source : Futurism, Financial Times