인공지능 목회상담의 출현에 대한 신학적 성찰과 과제

Abstract

The rapid development of artificial intelligence has revolutionized every aspect of human life. It is now time to consider how to coexist with AI in the realm of religion and ministry. This paper explores the challenges and issues that artificial intelligenceparticularly machine learning and deep learning applied to big dataposes to pastoral care and counseling. The researcher adopted a literature review methodology to analyze and review relevant studies for this research. Artificial intelligence is an engineering technology modeled after human brain neural networks and designed to perform information processing and intelligence roles similar to humans. The development of AI is closely related to the field of psychological counseling, and recently, it has been actively applied in psychological care and mental health, which involves managing human cognition, emotion, and behavior. When AI is used in pastoral care and counseling, its convenience and accessibility are valuable, offering advantages such as improving the training of pastoral counselors and increasing psychotherapeutic efficiency. However, there is also a risk that AI may limit the therapeutic relationship with the client, hinder the experience of God's presence, generate false information, raise human rights issues due to algorithmic bias, and raise ethical issues surrounding privacy and personal information. The use of AI in pastoral care and counseling raises critical questions: Can pastoral care ministries of healing, supporting, guiding, and reconciliation be effectively conducted using AI? Is pastoral counseling with spiritual discernment still possible? The Korean church and the broader Christian community that practices Christian counseling urgently need to establish ethical guidelines and develop educational programs for the era of AI. They also need to cultivate professional pastoral counselors who are trained in Christian spirituality and scientific and technological approaches to AI.