Nigerian app connects spiritual seekers to African priests online
Thirty-two-year-old Olawole Olakunle, an Ifa priest, has founded the web-based platform, Priests.Africa.
He undertakes centuries-old rituals from his desk, streaming his consultation to his client online.
It connects users with verified spiritual practitioners in Africa.
"Some people don't know how to find a priest, some people don't know what it looks like relating with a priest, and for that reason we decided to create a platform where genuine users will meet with genuine priests."
Users purchase virtual currency to engage with priests, who set their own rates for sessions.
The app ensures transparency and ethical practises through an embedded red flag scanner which aims to safeguard from unethical interactions.
Olakunle says his platform guarantees users receive personalized rituals, complete with video verification.
This user, who wishes to remain anonymous, found the platform during a tough period in his life.
He says he found spiritual guidance and a renewed sense of purpose.
"I realized that some of them just want me to be part of their congregation, they don't really want to solve my problem. I have a problem, I don't want to be under anybody, I just want to solve my problem and create a relationship. Some of them don't even know what they are doing, and some they know what they are doing, they understand it but we don't have a chemistry, they are doing the right thing for me but I am not seeing the result.'
The platform also has podcasts which Olakunle hopes will dispel stereotypes and understanding of spiritual practices.
He hopes it's a catalyst for genuine spiritual guidance via technology.
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AI Is Not A Mirror Of Who You Are Verity Harding is the director of AI and geopolitics project at Cambridge University. In an interview to Forbes India in 2024, she said: 'In some ways, AI holds a mirror up to us and shows us what we are like, particularly these generative AI technologies that are built on existing human data and language online, from books, scripts and blog posts. Although the companies involved have tweaked the algorithms to try their best to ensure it doesn't bring up the worst sides… of course, anything that can show the best side of us can also show the worst.' Thinking about AI as a mirror is a bit different than thinking about it is as a tool or an amplifier. But all three metaphors suffer from the same mistake in that they make you think of AI as something you can use to achieve something else – better performance in the first cases and better understanding of yourself and other people in the latter. The problem is not that these metaphors are reductive. The problem is they reduce your understanding of yourself. Instead of thinking of yourself as someone who asks what you want, how you grow, and who you are, the tech metaphors make you think of yourself as a tech user. That is, someone who stands in front of your surroundings with a purpose to achieve something, rather than someone who is part of your surroundings with a responsibility for your shared future. Like the kids in the pool, we think and talk about AI as tools we can use for what we want, while we ... More forget the structural system that makes us think this way. AI Is Like Grammar, Shaping How You Think Tool, amplifier, and mirror are not just misleading metaphors for AI, they are misleading metaphors for all technologies. Because, as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger put it, they make us 'utterly blind to the essence of technology' – that is, the default bias that makes us think that we are always better off using technology than we are not using it. But as mentioned above, AI differs from other technologies in that it does not hide this default bias. Unlike bows, cars, and other premodern and modern technologies, and unlike the internet, social media, and other digital technologies, AI allows us to see technology for what it really is. Namely, something that has as much influence on us as we have on it. We are never just users of technology, we are always also being used to promote the bias towards faster and more efficient technology. And while we were previously blind to this mutual influence, the data harvesting of large AI companies has made us see clearly that it is not only the nature around us that is being exploited in the name of technology and progress. We are being exploited too. To capture this insight and to avoid reducing ourselves and each other to tech users, we need a new metaphor for how to think and talk about technology. Heidegger used the term 'enframing' (Gestell) to describe how the essence of technology positions us as someone who stands in front of our surroundings with a purpose to achieve something. But I would suggest that an everyday phenomenon and term like 'grammar' can do just as well. Like grammar, technology is a structural system that enables us to understand and navigate the world in a way we otherwise would not be able to – but which also makes it harder for us to understand and navigate the world differently. Common to technology and grammar is that: Thinking and talking about technology as grammar opens up a world of possibilities to discover and discuss new aspects of our relationship with AI – and how it shapes our relationship with everything else.
