Yet people do treat AI as a religion, both in terms of believing in a higher power and as a culture. They have a deep faith in using AI as a moral virtue and they view people who don't use it or who oppose it as heretical, foolish or evil, while seeing themselves as having transcended mundane humanity to some high transhuman state of being. They'll say the latter either needs to be "saved" and "accept the faith." They feel the same ecstatic joy using AI that religious people sometimes feel in church, or when they don't they feel deep personal guilt and shame. They base their entire identity around AI, seeking to find ways to incorporate it into their lives the way new converts have to make everything about their religion.

Some people literally run a "model" of ChatGPT in their minds which they ask questions of, the way people pray to God, because they implicitly trust "the voice of God" more than their own. People use AI for moral guidance, as a primary source of truth, and for emotional connection. And then people who believe in the Singularity believe AI will become so intelligent that the rules of reality will simply cease to exist and the Eschaton will reward the faithful with infinite abundance and eternal life and punish the unbelievers with endless torture. There is a theology and an eschatology at work. You can see it in almost every AI related thread now. The language of AI and the language of religion are intersecting.

I don't think viewing AIs as gods is the wrong analogy, rather like any religion it's wrong outside of an academic sense because obviously gods aren't real. Viewing AI as simply a tool in the same vein as printing presses is ignoring the greater cultural context forming around it, and that context is worth paying attention to. One claim theists often make is that the secular world fails to provide the sense of belonging, meaning and community that religion one did, and it seems obvious that modern always-online and always-commercial society alienates and dehumanizes people, leading to a longing for real connection that it can't provide. AI is clearly filling that void for many people, and it is becoming a secular religion in many real ways.