New AI model, Kairos, poised to reach Iranians: Mission Network News

By Katie O’Malley

Iran (MNN) — In late July, Iran’s government nearly passed a bill that would have strengthened its chokehold on Iranians’ access to the internet. Punishment also would have increased for publishing anything the government considered false news. But public backlash made the regime withdraw the bill — for now.

Lana Silk with Transform Iran explains that in Iran’s restrictive environment, many Iranians are afraid to voice their questions to a real-life person. Yet the number of Christians in Iran is growing, and so is the number of Muslims seeking answers about their faith. These are just a few reasons that Kairos, a newly launched AI model from Transform Iran, is such a timely resource.

“It’s always been an age-old problem for Christian ministry in Iran to keep up with the demand,” Silk said.  

Silk explains that if you ask AI systems like ChatGPT about faith or Christian doctrine, “you will get very humanist, sort of ‘open to all possibilities’ kinds of answers, and sometimes favoring false doctrines as well.”

Not so with Kairos. It pulls only from a carefully vetted library of resources from Transform Iran’s Christian apologetics center.

“What people can do with Kairos is ask those questions and have a conversation with a system that understands Christianity thoroughly and understands how it interacts with Islam, and all of the questions that Muslims have about that sort of conversion,” said Silk. 

Kairos offers Iranians safety and anonymity. It also responds as a baseline counselor. By gathering information from the topics and even the word choices people use, Kairos will suggest to them when human counseling is needed. It can point people to contact Transform Iran’s follow-up counseling team. 

You can try Kairos out for yourself! The model is tailored for the Farsi-speaking world but is available in over 250 languages. Transform Iran intends to train Kairos to operate in many of Iran’s ethnic languages as well. 

“Pray for the people involved on this project. Pray for the project itself that it will withstand the attacks of the Iranian government, who will try their best to derail it,” said Silk. “Then pray and see if the Lord might have you invest in it, because there [are] some really exciting new things we’re wanting to build into it.”

Read more about Kairos

Header photo courtesy of Ashkan Forouzani via Unsplash. 

Insert photo courtesy of Florin Palamarciuc via Unsplash.

Originally published on: Mission Network News