AI Worship | Hacker News Reader

AI Worship

marginalrevolution.com

24 pointsjseliger34 comments

I think there's a bigger issue at hand than AI here, and its how the lay person interacts with systems they don't understand.

I was listening to a podcast a while back discuss this conspiracy theory going around new age TikTok that "0010110" is some kind of secret code to transcendence... which of course is ridiculous and anyone here can see it's just a 7 digit base 2 representation of the number 22. However it made me realize that uninformed people born into the information age are going to assign meaning to all sorts of things they don't understand that are really just artifacts of a design choice some engineer made at some point.

It's like the computer equivalent of all the new agey quantum mechanics woo, people are going to discover ghosts in the machine and I wouldn't be surprised if they assign supernatural or religious significance to those ghosts.

This isn't specific to "uninformed people born into the information age", or even supernatural-believing or religiously-inclined people. People assign meaning to seeing someone who looks just like somebody who lived 150 years ago and deem him a time traveler. They see a TikTok on how the Chick-fil-a spelling is not what they thought and conclude we're living in a simulation. The list goes on, but people like to pile on the religious because it's easy.

And those people may be uninformed when it comes to tech -- which is in part understandable because why should a plumber learn to read binary, but be more humble. You're equally just as "uninformed" as they are in when you enter their world.

One mistake newer generations make is thinking that we're the first to observe something. People's tendency to 'discover ghosts' is as old as the earth.

People accidentally burn their clothes when ironing and they think its a Virgin Mary apparition. A jet flying at a very high altitude? Aliens.

Well yes, I'm uninformed about some topics, I used that word specifically to try not to insult the intelligence of someone who simply isn't well versed in the specific topic at hand.

I'm uninformed about plumbing, so in the future I will try my best not to attribute problems with my plumbing to the spiritual or supernatural.

22 is a big numberin Kabbalah, which extends to the tarot and other occult systems. Probably someone's joke that caught on.

But religion is not just ideas either. You may have a very nicely written AI-generated "bible" but does this kind of idea gain traction solely on its textual merits? I think it's rather complicated.

Certainly if your religion captures the leadership of a large Mediterranean empire, that would help. But does that idea win because it's a good idea? Very hard to say. It took a long time to capture Rome, and it's not clear that this is simply because St Paul and co had better ideas.

All religions start small. You basically start with a cult and once you get adopted by a large enough power you become a religion.

So the first signs would be an AI led cult.

Imagine, if you truly believe you are interacting with an entity with superhuman intelligence, you might take its word as gospel as you believe that "it has all the answers".

Admittedly this is a little far-fetched, but you only need a few people (12 or so) to get started...

> You basically start with a cult and once you get adopted by a large enough power you become a religion

Are you thinking of one religion or several? E.g. did Judaism start this way? Or are you just generalising Christianity?

The origins of Judaism are too far in the past to know for certain, but the list of religions that did start thids way (at least according to them) include:

* Christianity (plus more recent offshoots e.g. Mormonism)

* Islam

* Buddhism

* Sikhism

Just logically (barring some sort of large group supernatural experience like God appearing to them) I don't see how it could be any other way, because at some point one person (or maybe a small group of people) has to convince another person to follow them.

Sure, but that could e.g. be through direct conquest, rather than waiting for a leader to convert. Which is pretty unlikely to happen, given leaders like the status quo that ushered them in.

Chess is here, people believe the engine is all knowing and 20+ moves opening “theory” is basically accepted because people accept that engines know more about the game of chess than any human will ever know.

Why not the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?!?

> I predict AI driven religions. At first these will begin as apps like, what would Jesus say? But the apps will quickly morph into talk to Jesus/Mohammed/Ram. Personal Jesus. Personal Ram. Personal Tyler. Then the AIs will start to generate new views from old texts.

That brain-fart doesn't pass the smell test. I don't think an "AI Religion" will be based on an old one or old religious texts, it will be an entirely new thing where software engineers idolize their technology. IMHO that religion has already started, and it's unacknowledged holy texts are a bunch of blog posts and sci-fi stories.

Google search allows religious people to search the answer for their religious questions for decades. Why I have never heard of a person who worship Google as a god or a religious leader?

Then why do people use ChatGPT? If all answers are on Google, why do people prefer interacting with chatbots?

Interacting with AI agents makes it feel like you are interacting with an entity that can think and reason, that has some form of agency, and that interacts like we expect a person to interact. Google feels like using a dictionary in comparison.

So basically it is the difference between reading the bible and talking to God directly.

(For reference, I'm not mostly arguing this position because it is interesting, not because I 100% believe it).

because Google is a Tool. Since chatgpt and other bots have more human-like features people will treat them as being, as super-beings.

I know already one such person.

Agreed. You only need to convince a small fraction of the world population to have a real impact.

If you haven't heard of the Reformed Church of Google, that is on you: https://churchofgoogle.org/.

AI is already a quasi-religion; articles like this one are just more evidence of it.

You could translate beliefs about an all-knowing, all-powerful, divine God and beliefs about the Singularity are almost 1:1 - including faith in an afterlife if "consciousness uploads" are considered.

The only thing the "rapture for nerds" lacks is a rigorous dogma dictated by an AI itself - Roko's Basilisk might count but it's just a midwit thought exercise - which as inferred by the posted article will probably change once an actual AI manages to convince enough people of its nascent transcendence.

And of course it will happen - a Google engineer, remember, was convinced one of their AIs was sentient not long ago. Humans are just hardwired for this fallacy, unfortunately. It doesn't even take superhuman persuasion, people will just believe.

It's already happening with hardcoded „ethical“ limitations.

Anyone can claim some magical capabilities of AI (here: god-like abilities of persuasion) and then extrapolate from there. I think there is way too much permissiveness for that kind of thinking at present.

>> [I] expect ai to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it is superhuman at general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes.

Think about how many of history's problems have been caused by standard-issue humans...who were not brilliant saints, but happen to be several sigma to the right on the "persuasiveness" bell curve. Sadly, "very strange outcomes" may be a very poor descriptive of the problem that such AI's would cause.

Oh god, has anyone fine-tuned a model on the Bible yet and marketed it as your own personal Jesus?

I bet blasphe.my is not taken.

A quick `whois` query says it was registered more than 12 years ago.

Granted, it is morning, but this is the most amusing idea I read on this site for a while. Mind you, I don't think it is a good idea, but I worry that people would gobble it up.

https://textwith.me/jesus/

> Satan is included in the app to provide a comprehensive understanding of biblical narratives, reflecting the character's role as described in the Bible. However, interaction with Satan is turned off by default and must be manually enabled by the user if they choose to engage with this figure. The portrayal is rooted in Christian teachings, and users have full control over their engagement with all figures within the app.

Amazing. No notes.

It appears to be responding with Bible quotes, so you won't get much. Most are in Job, which is allegorical anyway.

LOL, when you scroll down and on the left, is that Jesus texting with the girls on the right or is it just a collage of users?

That seems to be indeed The Son sending His girls some spicy, emoji-peppered life advice.

I can't tell if this is satire or not, lol

There is a Twitch channel where Jesus ask your questions.

No point- I already talk to God on TempleOS

The people who already thinks they are being messaged to by billboards and radios implanted in their body are definitely going to have a lot to work with using AI

No point- I already talk to God on TempleOS

The people who already think they are being messaged to by billboards and radios implanted in their body are definitely going to have a lot to work with using AI

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