Why do I get a feeling we are going to see an explosion of secular cults that have weird beliefs in AI and worship AGI?
Thing is, it doesn't work. The primary purpose of religion is to tackle questions that are metaphysical in nature; to provide an explanation for the deep mysteries of life. To most believers, God isn't a comic book character that's worshipped solely because he is powerful -- He is worshipped as the first mover, the alpha and omega, beyond all constraint -- and the mere fact of His existence explains their own. (He created them in His image, etc.) An AI, however advanced, would be an infinitely lesser being; nothing more than a powerful agent, constrained and embedded alongside us in space and time.
Others say it's primary purpose is making large groups of people collaborate instead of fight each other.
[0] heck, given the echoes of polytheism from earlier eras, I'd argue that the entity in the Bible (especially the earlier parts) isn't even really the Christian God as seen today by self-identified Christians.
If humans did manage to create an artificial being with seemingly magical powers, I don't see why it wouldn't develop a religion around it. Even if the being is not God in itself, it could be argued that mankind's existence has become explained by the divine imperative to bring this superior being into the universe.
The idea of the God as something outside existence is recent history. Humans are hardwired to worship kings and prophets as gods. AI will be no different, probably a lot more convincing even.
Or you could use an AI to synthesize an entirely new religion, complete with its own distant god and its own completed metaphysics -- but that might be a hard sell. In this case, the AI itself is not the object of worship, but it takes upon itself the role of prophet and evangelist to some fiction it has concocted. It would be interesting, though, that's for sure.
All these forks and branches might eventually become different settlements, solar systems, multiverses... it's all information, and each world an experiment unto itself.
Morality can't be stuck in the pre-industrial era, and our current religions aren't really well suited for questions of matter and energy, consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, scaling thought past biological bottlenecks, etc.
I'm really excited about this future, even (or especially) if it means the end of human dominance. Life will find a way :D
"I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side."
Ending up with something even remotely like a Culture Mind would be pretty awesome to me...
#FullyAutomatedLuxuryGaySpaceCommunism
I don't think there's anything particularly mystical about that, but I suppose you could say that its spirituality-adjacent in the way that all great things are.
I’d question whether it is “undeniable”, but I do think this sounds like the exact sort of foundational mythology necessary to establish a religion oriented around AI.
If anyone has ever said anything cynical ever I think this beats it.
Biology is amazing.
>What are you hoping will be understood.
Understanding is like the apparent horizon. The closer you get the further away you realize it is. There will always be more to understand, we will just reach a point where our little monkey minds are incapable of holding enough 'state' to grasp for the next step. I say that as a monkey who is awfully fond of my own little monkey mind.
Improvements to understanding always seem obvious after they're made and it always seema like you have a mostly complete worldview right up until you realize you don't. That's how it works.
If you can explain to me from base principles why the fine structure constant has the value it does, or why there is such a pronounced baryon asymmetry or any of the many big open questions in basic physics I will acquiesce the point.
Being ignorant of the big questions doesn't mean big questions don't exist, only that you don't know about them yet.
If not, then all the answers are variations on each other. To be fair, in some sense that project has already broken down. We have 'fields' in empty space, 'virtual' particles, correlation over distances where causation is not possible, and other things that, basically, are inconceivable.
Ian Banks' Culture series takes this idea to the extreme, feels like it's getting more relevant by the day in the past week.
Well, Minds are friendly, so I'd take it.
A tendency that would take humanity a few hundred years backward, that's such a shame.
Laziness will prevail when immediacy and cargo cult tribalism are the most potent currency.
Not in this case - AI, singularitanism and transhumanism have had cultish, neo-religious elements to them for decades. All we're seeing now is the seeds that Ray Kurzewil, Rudy Rucker and others planted ages ago bearing fruit now that technology actually seems to be catching up to people's fears.
I'm not claiming it is, just that it seems to be.
You may find this interview interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tTJR9vqWB4