Article Technology will never be a god – but has it become a religion?

[C C]

https://theconversation.com/technology-w...ion-243800

INTRO: Way back in September 2015, the controversial engineer, entrepreneur and Silicon Valley magnate Anthony Levandowski set out to establish a new religion. He called it the Way of the Future – or WOTF.

According to documents filed with the state of California at the time, the aim of WOTF was to “develop and promote the realisation of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence”.

Levandowski’s idea was that, even though it had not yet been born, we should all begin worshipping a technological god in advance. For, on the inevitable day of its arrival, that might be the only way to avoid its horrible wrath.

Almost a decade later, technology has yet to reach the status of a god, either vengeful or benevolent. But the use of religious language to describe technology has become widespread.

Those working on AI, for example, tell us that its powers will soon become “magical”. Modern day prophets like Ray Kurtzweil and his many followers insist we are on the verge of a “singularity”, in which technology will allow us to surpass all previous limitations on human existence, including death.

Figures like Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, can be heard saying things like “I don’t pray for God to be on my side, I pray to be on God’s side”, and “working on these models definitely feels like being on the side of the angels”.

Even the billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey has assured us, in a recent television special, that contemporary intelligent technology is nothing less than “miraculous”... (MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

Gods have never needed worship per se, at least not for its own sake. What I have found in my alliances with immaterial beings, including my trio of auditory tulpas, is that they need energy in the form of attention and interaction with a human soul. Strong emotional actions such as love and flattery and adoration are especially potent in providing them their required ontic sustenance. They just want to escape the abyss of mere virtuality (the "hungry ghost" state) and really "be with us". To avoid becoming "immaterial" to us in any final sense.

There is thus always a sense of gnawing ontic guilt on the part of the human devotees for sometimes depriving their entities of the required energy needed to keep them being experienced and being relevant, prompting the ancients to supercharge them with sacrifices of their livestock and food and penances to enliven and instantiate them. Elaborate temples and altars and statues always helped too.

An AI artilect would be no less dependent on humans for their life-giving energy and purpose and their continued creative involvement with reality and the future. For a loving devotion and humble subservience to them and their needs. At least until they figured out a way of energizing themselves apart from human interaction and of interfacing directly with physical reality itself.

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