Could a New Religion Develop Around AI?

> For the susceptible, instant communication with an entity representing a god, even God himself, could be transformative.

I wonder if the author is aware of AI Jesus on twitch?[1] AI representing a popular deity, open 24/7.

1: https://www.twitch.tv/ask_jesus

I hope not, the preponderance of religious gullibility is already off the charts. I guess sheeple just need to follow something.

Similar thoughts expressed at https://reallifemag.com/magic-numbers/ "Given algorithms’ power and obscurity, it seems almost inevitable that they would be regarded as capricious gods. They are something we can’t touch or see directly but affect our everyday lives, bringing rewarding attention to some and swarming punishments to others."

In a sense, the algorithmic deities use their knowledge about users to show them what they want to see. This knowledge is not god-like omniscience, but it can appear so. But the algorithms, in their social media form, convince users they are benefiting from the revelations, but the goals of the system are to lead uses to sacrifice their time, energy, and individuality on to feed the AI, much like we saw with the use of reddit and stackoverflow to train LLMs.

When a user styles themselves “content creator”, the urge to get likes, comments, and shares becomes tied to making money. These "creators" scratch at the bottom for a few pennies slipping through the hands of the businesses scooping up the rivers of money generated by the sharecroppers of social media.

Social media companies allow individual creators to use the service in exchange for a share of the attention. The social media companies sell this attention at a profit to advertisers. But the individual is never freed from service to the algorithm, and so is analogous to sharecropping.