If you don’t understand it, worship it. One day you will develop the wisdom necessary to understand it. That was usually how Gods and faiths spread and got entrenched in societies, commanding the unquestioning subservience of millions. Now there is a new kid on the block: artificial intelligence (AI). The bellwethers of the AI industry are working with missionary zeal to make individuals and institutions accept AI as their lord and saviour. There is a clear doctrine driving them: Anything that can be AI-ed, should be AI-ed.
AI is far superior to us. No aspect of life is beyond its pale. AI can automatically store and process every piece of information generated in the course of human existence. The collective human experience in its entirety is encapsulated in bits and bytes of data that can be systematically processed with analytical tools. People trust the ability of the AI to process and learn from all that data and draw the right lessons and inferences. We believe it can do this a lot better than any of us can. To the extent that many people are beginning to trust the AI’s judgment a lot more than their own. People now count on artificial intelligence to make many of the choices for them from cradle to grave, from picking the right breakfast food to selecting a life partner.
This is going to create a dependency the likes of which we have never seen before. AI will know more than us about everything. It will know us better than we ourselves do. If the definition of God is an all-knowing, all-seeing, allpowerful being people look up to in awe, what does one call AI? The humans vs. machine theme has been done to death in sci-fi. The buzz now is Gods vs. Machines. While people are still debating whether AI could develop consciousness, it has upped the ante further. AI is now presenting itself as a candidate in modern religion. Anthony Levandowski, a former executive at Google and Uber, has established a church to develop and promote the realisation of a Godhead based on artificial intel- ligence.
An AI gospel too is in the offing. So AI is taking its first steps towards becoming an official religion like Scientology. We can soon expect to see rules and doctrines as well as mythologies and cautionary tales based on the collective experience of followers. The nature of the AI Godhead is not very clear yet. But it seems unlikely that AI can be a monotheistic faith with a single omnipotent God. If anything AI will likely have a pantheon like Hindus with multiple manifestations of a single Supreme Godhead. There will be a panoply of Gods and Goddesses having complementary AI powers that appeal to different groups of people or different types of need.
We see Siri, Google Home, Amazon Echo and Apple Watch functioning like the patron saints, seers and oracles to whom people turn to every day. We are entering the AI version of medieval age where religion played a defining role in nearly all aspects of people’s lives. It is only a matter of time before a well-defined pantheon crystallises into being with different AI deities for wisdom, wealth, health, love, war and so on, each with a rightful place of its own. AI and its gurus or prophets will find ways and means to make its followers obey its tenets.
AI will fulfil the needs that make people pray and worship— which is often to serve a certain purpose in people’s lives. Which is a good benchmark for a religion. AI will create the right incentives— rewards and punishments, and all-seeing monitoring mechanisms that will make people follow its dictates. We already see examples where AI is causing significant behavioural changes in people. An Apple Watch is making people exercise more because it helps lower insurance premiums.
Conversely, people who do not use a wearable gadget need to pay more in premiums—which is their punishment. It is not difficult to see this extending to other parts of people’s lives. In addition to material comforts, AI, like religion, can also calm ruffled minds—there are plenty of mindfulness apps that are already floating in cyberspace. All said, there is one key difference between traditional religions and AI. Unlike traditional religions, AI will be highly rational and driven by logic all the time. AI religion could change shape much faster than other religions.
Its rules and doctrines can keep refreshing themselves because AI is always learning from the collective experience of people. It will keep evolving, correcting itself, and keep itself current and expedient. Hyper-rationality, however, will also be AI’s biggest weakness. AI Gods do not descend on earth or send their prophets to live life as a human. AI can be manipulative with cold logic, but it is lacks an element of human touch and empathy. It can always simulate like maya but can never be real. But it is another trait that poses a more severe challenge.
AI could turn into a juggernaut that leads to self-destructive behaviour. That was how the word juggernaut reportedly came into being. Devotees built huge chariots for Jagannath and when they rolled on during the rath yatra, some flung themselves in the way so that they could be crushed by the wheels. The AI faithful would do well to watch out.
M N Krish
works in consulting and is the author of The Steradian Trail: Book #0 of the Infinity Cycle
Email: krish@mnkrish.com