This is already happening, we just call them cults untill they get enough people, then they’re a religion.
Wonderful example of this: Mormons!
Every non Mormon viewed them (correctly) as an armed and dangerous cult, for decades, initially.
But anyway, there already are many individuals and small groups promoting some kind of idea of an LLM based spiritual thought structure, its not really that hard to just use an LLM as a tarot or horoscope reader, or invent your own kind of AI-mancy, a particular ritualistic /way/ of interacting with it, and /interpreting/ it.
You can basically work that into any religious structure that involves prophets or mystical messaging/revelation, pretty easily.
What wss the old Queens Against the Stone Age song?
I know that God is in the radio…
Well, now he/she/they’re in the computer, they’re talking to you through it, as a literal deus ex machina.
On that note, the actual game Deus Ex predicted this would happen, go look up JC’s conversation with Morpheus… the prototype of a much larger system AI.
We’ve also already got a good number of fairly credible accusations that the people building these things effectively are cults, more or less analagous to … say some 40k aedeptus mechanicus who became chaos worshippers, something like that.
We very seriously should expect a whole lot of people in the near future to invent entirely new kinds of religious conflict based on more or less pure vibes based, arbitrary opinions about how LLMs/AI and religion should or should not mix.
In times of economic chaos, people broadly almost always become more superstitious, cults become more numerous, religions become more prevalent and more extreme.
This is already happening, we just call them cults untill they get enough people, then they’re a religion.
Wonderful example of this: Mormons!
Every non Mormon viewed them (correctly) as an armed and dangerous cult, for decades, initially.
But anyway, there already are many individuals and small groups promoting some kind of idea of an LLM based spiritual thought structure, its not really that hard to just use an LLM as a tarot or horoscope reader, or invent your own kind of AI-mancy, a particular ritualistic /way/ of interacting with it, and /interpreting/ it.
You can basically work that into any religious structure that involves prophets or mystical messaging/revelation, pretty easily.
What wss the old Queens Against the Stone Age song?
I know that God is in the radio…
Well, now he/she/they’re in the computer, they’re talking to you through it, as a literal deus ex machina.
On that note, the actual game Deus Ex predicted this would happen, go look up JC’s conversation with Morpheus… the prototype of a much larger system AI.
We’ve also already got a good number of fairly credible accusations that the people building these things effectively are cults, more or less analagous to … say some 40k aedeptus mechanicus who became chaos worshippers, something like that.
We very seriously should expect a whole lot of people in the near future to invent entirely new kinds of religious conflict based on more or less pure vibes based, arbitrary opinions about how LLMs/AI and religion should or should not mix.
In times of economic chaos, people broadly almost always become more superstitious, cults become more numerous, religions become more prevalent and more extreme.