When I was in high school, I was a devout Roman Catholic. A convert in fact, for reasons we need not explore here. And oh, I exuded the insufferable zeal of the convert. I taught religious education classes (CCD, for those who know). I was my church's sacristan, arriving before dawn to prep all materials for the day's Masses, and staying to handle arrangements in between. I was even discerning for the priesthood, and met with seminarians, scholars—once even the cardinal of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
On Sundays, before I began my preparations, I would kneel and pray in the quiet dark of an empty church, alone before the image of Christ on the cross. I'd pray for grace, for oneness with the Holy Spirit, for the strength to be a faithful servant. And of course, I'd pray for answers. Desperately, beseechingly, I'd beg God for answers.
But always in the back of my head, no matter how fervent my prayers, I heard a voice—the voice of reason—telling me there was nobody listening.
I do not intend to malign anybody's spiritual faith. Please keep that in mind as we proceed. It's such a deeply personal thing, lived and practiced for myriad reasons. I can only speak to my journey. But I will absolutely malign the structures of organized religion; you can hold me to account for that.
Time, maturity, and education eventually won out over blind belief in me, and I drifted from the Church. I still believe deeply in many things, but none of them require faith without evidence.
I tell you all this so you understand: I know a prayerful soul when I see one.
In the past, I've equated generative AI to an addictive substance, or a weapon of mass destruction. Both of these metaphors still apply, but one yet greater encompasses the destructive power of both: religion. I see people praying to a god of our own creation. But in this faith, God answers prayers not in sign or symbol, but in unambiguous language.
The creators of generative AI have created a cult around it. Or maybe the cult is an emergent phenomenon of the technology itself, seductive as it is to many who do not understand it. Whether intentional or not, the signs of blind faith are present.
I need to lightly amend Clarke here. If miracles are magic from the divine, then any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracles. And so, presented with the wondrous output of generative models, output that confounds expectation and understanding, some respond as though they have witnessed the blind restored to sight and the lame up on their feet.
Not all users of generative models are believers. Many, perhaps most, have a practical estimation of the technology's capabilities and limitations. While I believe the technology to be anti-human and poisonous, I count myself among these. These are not the people who have begun to replace their own cognitive processes with answers from models, nor are they the ones who believe AI will save the world.
However, we should not downplay what the technology can do. Attempting to dismiss models' legitimate capabilities does not aid the cause against them. In fact, if the tool were useless, it would be much less dangerous. What it gets right is proof of its power for the faithful, and for the pragmatists, assigns the technology a benign or mildly benevolent valence.
But when I read the fawning, rosy-colored utopianisms spouted by generative AI's true believers, I see apologia.
The Believers
There are multiple categories of believers to consider here. At the highest echelon, you have the Apostles: these are the elites in tech who are spending billions trying to bring about the realization of their vision of god: a sentient artificial general intelligence (AGI) that will solve the world's problems and bring forth a golden age of humanity. Apostles also include the doomsayers who believe that, should AGI come into existence, it would herald the end of days. Consider the prognostications from Sam Altman at OpenAI, or even Google CEO Sundar Pichai at Microsoft, who equated AI to electricity and fire. Conversely, consider the auguries of Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, who warn that AGI's emergence leads to apocalypse.
Below Apostles, there are Disciples: those who believe in the work of the Apostles and want to contribute to the cause. Here you can place middle management that has bought into the vision of the Apostles, at significant cost to their companies. Disciples also include the LinkedIn class, those "thought leaders" who seem to make a living selling the promise of AI, without having to demonstrate actual returns.
Because there are, as yet, no actual returns. It is an article of faith. One wonders what happens to that faith when the venture capital money dries up, and the entire misadventure is still hemorrhaging money.
Beneath Disciples, we have the Flock: those users who have fallen into the thrall of the model's output, convinced it can do far more than the technology allows, and who have all but surrendered to the model the sacred birthright of humanity: independent thought. I am shocked at how prevalent this phenomenon has become. Have you ever had someone respond to your question with "ChatGPT says?" You may have been talking to a worshiper.
This last category scares me the most, since it is from the Flock that new Disciples and Apostles will arise. And young initiates, such as children in schools adopting generative AI in their curricula, will have little reason to doubt the tenets of the faith. The structures for a self-sustaining cult are in place.
Imagine a future in which a significant portion of the population takes the output of generative models as unassailable fact. Imagine schools that accept model output as evidence in essays and argumentation. Imagine lives guided by the advice of these models.
Societies who follow oracles have predictable outcomes.
The Prophecy
Today's AI is not the messiah of this faith; it is more a prophet, capable of minor miracles that suggest the promise of what's to come.
The Prophecy foretells an all-powerful, sentient intelligence that will, depending on the interpretation, either save or destroy the world. Whether such an intelligence follows from the output of generative models is not relevant to believers' faith, for their faith does not require evidence beyond the miracles they have already witnessed.
For believers, the prophet can do no wrong. Errors are rationalized, justified, but never seen as a fundamental flaw. Besides, even if it errs, that is nothing compared to its potential, to what generative AI could one day become. This is a frequent position held by generative AI exponents: sure, the technology today is flawed, but wait until tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Promising a paradise to come is easy money in the religion business. It's a hustle as old as time. And it's coupled with the nature of faith: belief without evidence. When it's virtuous to believe without proof, then no counter proof will change the mind of the devout.
But the Prophecy matters most to Apostles and Disciples. Like all religions, this one is not so much about the godhead as it is about the congregation. People want to belong, and AI has created a new place to belong.
The Yearning
Jung wrote extensively on humanity's "religious impulse," the desire to seek the divine and ultimately surrender to it. I have no idea whether this is an inherent part of our species, but I have both experienced and observed the yearning to belong to a flock, and to be under the protection of a power greater than oneself. And while in the flock, to exult and glorify that which binds you to your fellow believers.
It feels so, so good to belong. It feels even better to belong among the saved. Humans are tribal, and the mind will perform incredible feats of logical contortion to remain in consensus with the group. Belonging matters far more than anything resembling objective truth.
Knowing the power of the desire to belong, I find myself weighing the praise of generative AI against that influence. If someone's claim is overzealous, I wonder whether the praise is genuine, or whether the praise is primarily a shibboleth, meant to identify and reinforce one's belonging in the Flock.
And while the Flock concerns itself with belonging, the Apostles pursue the work of fulfilling the Prophecy.
The Face of God
Make no mistake: The Apostles are trying to build God and meet it face-to-face. They seek their own beatific vision. Of course, when you're building God yourself, are you not seeking your own glorification? Something about hubris probably applies here.
There are two versions of this god: a benevolent, loving, servile one that will bring about paradise on earth; and a monstrous, Lovecraftian horror that will surely plunge the earth into fire and ruin should we open the portal and let it into our world. But these are two sides of the same coin, since it is the awesome power of the entity that justifies its worship, be it merciful or vengeful. And in either case, the devout are rushing headlong into bringing their prophecy to fulfillment. Yes, even the eschatological version. Many believers would rather meet their god and be consumed by it than never meet it at all.
And this brings us to the "so what?" of it all, the danger posed by religious fervor for generative AI and The Prophecy.
The Threat
In any religion that promises a future paradise only for the faithful, the believers violate the fundamental principal of ethics. Ethics is concerned with the business of how we shall live well together—here and now, and in the foreseeable future. But believers in a paradise, whether here or in the afterlife, are not playing for the same stakes as everyone else. It is acceptable to sacrifice the present (and nonbelievers) in the service of attaining their promised future reward. Consequently, when the devout attain power in society and use that power to further their goals, we all suffer. In the case of the Cult of AI, this is already happening.
Building god and its vast temples may well poison the air, steal our water, and barren the land. That's the environmental threat, which of impacts us all (albeit some more than others.).
Meanwhile, the constant spew of meaningless, inhuman language in text, audio, and video, poses a material threat to truth itself, as I warned two years ago. Those concerns have been profoundly validated in the interim.
And then we have the Flock, building a generation unable to think for themselves, wholly reliant on a flawed, limited, and not-at-all-impartial prophet. At the altar, they offer up the sacrifice of their own mind to receive that for which they desperately hunger. It's the same thing we all want, the same thing I prayed for on my knees in the dark church. It's the thing that, in absence, gives meaning to our exploration of existence in all its dimensions.
They receive the holy sacrament of Answers. Forget truth; it is answers they seek. We all seek answers, but the Flock have discovered a dangerous aspect of human nature. Or at least, an aspect present in more than I would have imagined.
It is better to have a wrong answer quickly than a right answer slowly, and much better than no answer at all.
The Cult of AI promises an end to doubt, and in the future, an end to suffering. Such is the promise of all religions. But who suffers so the true believers can pursue their paradise?
I would prefer to prevent suffering now. So my job, as I see it, must be to attack and dethrone god.