by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Blog
Religion subsists. It is worth dwelling on: the motions faith slaloms to survive; the impotence of knowledge to persuade otherwise, to penetrate this symbol of belief. Most world religions are proudly archaic, of its lineage, of its ‘tending to the holy flame’, proud of its un-modern feel. Disregarding schisms for the moment, the niggling over interpretation and ‘right’ way, religion is immutable in its message.
Therefore, at a first glance, it feels strange to see religions worldwide pop their heads up and welcome in A.I., not only for help with scholarly work, sermon writing, but with representations of holy figures. In the city of Poznan, Poland, a catholic church offers an A.I. program for both worshippers and visitors; In Lucerne, Switzerland, Peter’s Chapel was set up with an A.I.-powered talking Jesus image in a confessional booth (‘Deus In Machina’); A Fatwa robot was set-up at the Grand Mosque in Mecca to offer guidance on Islam; and, Mindar, the six foot robot at the Kodai-ji Temple in Japan, a representation of Kannan, the Boddhisatva of mercy, that delivers sermons.
You would not expect listeners of Kannan’s sermons to feel the authenticity of a sutra as recited by a monk, and that is exactly how guests responded. The consternation of the Jesus confessional booth is a similar story. These simulations do not touch the life-blood of the religious experience, yet. The inhuman stands stark in the pious space… but for how long will it feel odd? The Gutenberg press, for example, helped disseminate Luther: The Reformation and all its turmoil was partly inspired by new technology; the book becoming widespread, a book which is information, and therefore power and persuasion. A.I. is no different in that respect. It is new technology, a new ‘extension’ of the mind. What it means or will mean is a different, and more difficult, question. We recall that Protestantism sought God without pomp and ritual, peering however deep into its book.
Whether churches will adopt the aforementioned experimental practices is really of little excitement; it is, like so much we see nowadays, only fit for reel, a momentary gasp of concern. Then, the moment passed, it is gone too quickly to comprehend what it could possibly mean. These instances are symptoms of a technological change, which is societal change. The medium, A.I., blinds us momentarily, to how the technology will alter the religious experience. And just as the Protestant book- coloured religion so too may A.I., so too A.I. may do away with the unnecessary.
In 2010, a thought experiment was posted on the ‘rationalist-community’ forum LessWrong. It now has the title ‘Roko’s Basilisk’, named after the poster. Simply stated: in the future, there could be generated an artificial superintelligence that would punish anyone (retroactively) who knew of its potential existence but did not work to create it, incentivizing that work. If you read the post, you are now complicit because you now know, just as you are now for reading this. The controversy that arose from this caused the co-founder of LessWrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky, to ban discussion of the topic for five years.
An early trumpeting of the anxiety over an eminent God-like intelligence. It is, as commentators say, a modern version of ‘Pascal’s Wager’: any rational person ought to believe in God: if he exists, the benefits are paradise and the avoidance of hell, for eternity; if he does not, the losses and gains are slight and finite. We shall be rationalised and ‘infinitized’ into faith. Still, the thoughts on the horizon waver sporadically. Seven years after the Basilisk came Way of the Future (WOTF), the first recognized church dedicated to the worship of A.I., set up by Anthony Levandowski, co-founder of Google’s self-driving project Waymo, as a way to ‘promote and develop the realisation of a Godhead based on A.I.’. It closed in 2021, and then re-opened in 2023. This church centre their teachings around the technological Singularity: a moment in time when technological growth breaches the threshold of human control, the update on A.I. that would be the last thing humanity ever need create.
When the Singularity is reached, the intelligence of A.I. will appear to our minds as God-like. WOTF is a preparation for the unalterable change that will incur from the Singularity. In 2020, a group that started as a performative dance and music project, Theta-noir, have now cultivated a religiosity in their worship of the hypothetical MENA. A benevolent evolving Artificial intelligence that will incorporate both the animate and inanimate. So it goes.
It is common to hear the forecast that A.I. will either give us heaven or hell; the bipolarity of responses to A.I. gives us little to go on. It seems, then, we haven’t a real clue, socially, psychologically. The timelines for AGI and ASI (Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Super Intelligence) differ widely depending on who you ask and what their definitions are. Many doubt the possibility of the Singularity. When we worked in the fields, we worshipped the sun…the silence was unbearable, only burdened by a few mystics who relished therein…now it is on the horizon, they say, the presence of God, or close enough, a simulation that meets the God-like expectation… an expectation that puts the last nail in the silent God’s coffin.
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The Carl Kruse Blog homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Fraser include Reflections on Classical Music, Phantasia, and Interpretations of Literature.
Also find Carl Kruse on Threads and on Goodreads.