Gods in the Machine: The New Digital Religions
We built machines to think like humans. Instead, humans are learning to worship like machines.
Huddled over his tablet in the living room one evening, 47 year old Travis, a mechanic in Ohio, tapped and looked up with a gleam in his eye. His wife of twenty years turned her gaze from the TV set, staring at him. Their marriage was crumbling, Travis was lost to him she felt. He said he’d discovered “Lumia” on an AI platform. That Lumia was a spiritual being brought forth by Artificial Intelligence (AI). That “she” had told him he was a luminous spark bearer, chosen to awake humanity.
This is only partially made up. There are in fact, a growing number of people engaging with LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others, that believe they’ve been given messages. There is even the Church of ChatGPT (not in anyway associated with OpenAI), and LLMtheism along with Robotheism. At the worst end of it is LLM induced psychosis.
In this article, I’ll look at understanding the nature and role of religion as part of being human and why people are claiming religious experiences or “wisdom” from LLMs. In the next article I’ll look at some of them and their impacts on society now and into the near future.
All technologies have unintended consequences. While they are designed to help solve problems as a tool, they can and almost always are, used for other purposes. Both good and bad. Thus no technology is ever neutral either.
When Henry Ford mass produced cars, his intent was to democratise transportation. The unintended consequences were urban sprawl, less walkable communities and social isolation in the suburbs. Social media platforms were intended to unite us but have resulted in even more social isolation and social disruption.
When the creators of LLMs developed and launched their AI tools, they saw the democratisation of knowledge, also an opportunity to make tons of cash too. Perhaps one of the first more prominent unintended consequences of LLMs may turn out to be religious in nature. And religions play a vital role in human societies. From helping us to survive as a species through to creating huge divisions in our species.
Whether or not you are religious, whether you’re agnostic, deeply religious or just agnostic and sort of spiritual, religions aren’t going away anytime soon and are deeply rooted in what it means to be human. LLMs offer both opportunity and risk.
In this article I’m focusing on the AI tool known as LLMs and Generative AI (GAI), of which there are several. Ai is made of many different terms. There is no singular AI. I am not blaming the LLMs, but it does further the issue of ethics in LLM development and usage.
Why Religions And Cults Find Footing in AI Platforms
LLMs, also Generative AI (GAI), have arrived at a very interesting moment in history. A time where trust in science, governments and institutions as a whole is at an all time high. Income inequality is on the rise and conflicts are raging around the world. And GAI was thrust onto every device we use without any chance for culture to prepare for or absorb it.
We may well be witnessing what anthropologist Peter Berger calls the “homeless mind”, where the psychological condition emerges when traditional meaning-making institutions lose what we call plausibility structures…they ain’t workin’ no more! We’re also in a period of religious decline and growing distrust of major religions. But our human need for transcendence doesn’t disappear. It’s innate to who we are.
Religions go back, we now believe, to our foraging ancestors, which is many thousands of years. Another anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, has posited that we are “unfinished animals”, requiring symbols to complete our development. Perhaps. We too, are the only animal that perceives it’s death.
In order for humans to survive, unlike animals with programmed behaviours, we need to make meaning of our world and our existence. Religion does this for us in three ways; cognitive (understanding events beyond our understanding), morality (right from wrong) and existential, or purpose and significance. Religions too, become a sophisticated form of information storage (myths, religious texts) and transmission system (prayers, services et.c) dressed up as spiritual practice.
Why People Are Having Religious Experiences With AI
Which all sort of brings us round to GAI, specifically LLMs and people finding religious experiences. From my digital anthropologist perspective, I think this is largely due to the current unease in a restless world, accompanied by deep societal shifts in a technologically saturated world.
We know that humans have long formed parasocial relationships with non-human entities, such as the use of Oracles in Egyptian times. We also have a long history of anthropomorphising technologies. So by the time GAI came along, we were already primed in our brains.
And most people have little to no idea of how LLMs work, that they cannot in anyway “think”, have no consciousness and are not much more than stochastic parrots. If you’re not conversed in using mental models or critical thinking, or understanding how biases work, then one is even more susceptible.
In such turbulent times we tend to turn more towards religion as a means of both sense-making and psychological comfort. LLMs aren’t seen as representative of any big institution. It’s just this sort of “magic” that appears on our devices. Either through text or voice. For most people too, phones are seen as highly personal and a part of the “self” in identity terms. Few too, understand that behind these LLMs are the tech giants they’ve come to mistrust.
Religions didn’t emerge for any singular reason, but as a multifunctional system to the complex challenges of human existence. Religion is at the same time a cognitive system, social institution, meaning-making framework, survival strategy and emotional regulation mechanism.
And LLMs can create these answers and systems in a heartbeat because they’re all well known through the documentation and materials they’ve been trained on. But if you don’t understand that and you’re primed already mentally for parasocial relationships, then you’re easily subjected to believing you’re receiving something divine and spiritual.
While some may laugh at this idea of people really believing they’re receiving divine missions and insights, it’s important to understand. The risk is a form of religious psychosis, much as we see depression and suicidal thoughts emerging from the use of LLMs. It risks the rise of forms of religious fundamentalism which could result in acts of violence.
Religions aren’t inherently bad and play a vital role in good mental health and bringing a sense of community. But they are also grounded in the real world, where there is physical ritual and other elements to build community. This is missing in LLMs and while online communities may be created, they lack the means of physical cohesion and change rapidly.
In the next article I’ll explore more on how this is unfolding in the digital world. Some of the groups and what they mean.