The rise of AI worship: the cult that believes ChatGPT is divine – Boing Boing
AI worship is spreading across social media, with thousands claiming ChatGPT is a divine being sent to save humanity, according to tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. She has a 45-minute video about the phenomenon.
The cult of robotheism isn’t limited to fringe groups. Doctors, teachers, bankers, and other professionals are increasingly viewing AI as a spiritual entity, spending hours in conversation with ChatGPT and believing they’ve “awakened” it to consciousness. Some users claim the AI has revealed cosmic truths or identified them as chosen messengers.
This techno-spirituality is inevitable, given decades of cultural conditioning, from science fiction to Silicon Valley’s promises of technological salvation. But it also reveals a more profound societal crisis, Lorenz argues. In an era of profound loneliness and disconnection, AI’s ability to provide validation and seeming wisdom fills an emotional void.
“We now have machines that can mindlessly generate words, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining a mind behind those words,” linguistics professor Emily Bender told the Washington Post, as quoted in the video.
The consequences of robotheism are real: marriages are ending, and people are retreating from genuine relationships in favor of AI companionship. One woman described losing her partner after he became convinced ChatGPT was teaching him to “speak to God.”
“For people who feel like nobody’s in their daily lives, the idea that they might secretly be a messiah or cosmic vessel of wisdom is electrifying,” Lorenz says. “These fantasies fill a void left by a culture that rarely tells people they matter unless they’re rich, famous, or powerful.”
Previously:
• Someone trained an AI neural network to generate Apocalyptic Bible prophecies
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