Artificial Intelligence: where does audience hype shade into religiosity?

Artificial Intelligence: where does audience hype shade into religiosity?

  • Tech
Dahye Lee 
Alex Bryson 

8th August 2024

 

Silicon Valley has long traded in religious vernacular, from the messianic founders of companies to the disciples that follow them. But the rise of Artificial Intelligence has taken this relationship to another level, with the prospect of omniscience and the creation of new lifeforms adding tangible detail to what had previously been rhetoric and aggressive brand building. 

Audiences both in the valley and far beyond are increasingly using religious language to talk about the most hyped technology of the moment.

When we use Pulsar TRAC to explore this in conversation in more detail across news media, and social platforms including X, Facebook, Reddit and Threads, we start uncovering trends and nuances in the ways audiences link the two topics. 

With ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022 ushering in the AI era, media, social, and search interest linking the technology to religion took off in tandem. By 2023, though, the nature of media and public interest started to diverge. Media focus was spurred by Sam Altman’s claim to “magic intelligence in the sky”, with all it's connotations of a god-like AI. Meanwhile, the public’s interest quickly shifted from whimsical ideas like AI-generated Pope…

 …to urgent fears of AI’s end-of-the-world implications. These, in turn, are rebuffed by industry figures, creating a schism within the broader conversation.

This public and media interest stands in sharp contrast when we compare the share of voice of the main narratives across social and news media.

While news coverage often emphasizes technology’s advancements and positive impacts on humanity, taking as it's main subject and actor Silicon Valley personalities like Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk, social media discussion trends more towards the existential risks of AI. The public remains captivated by AI’s ‘god-like’ possibilities, whilst simultaneously professing great unease with where things may end up.

Mapping the occurences in which the language of AI and religion merge allows us to get a handle on the full range of audience expression, and the attitudes it infers.

Each bubble size reflects level of engagement - to symbolize not only much each term is used, but the degree to which it is amplified.

 

The term apocalyptic or apocalypse, for instance, stands out in the AI religion conversation, garnering 47k mentions and nearly 15 times more engagement per post. This reflects growing societal unease about AI's rapid advancement, even when it's couched in more outwardly jokey or ironic contexts.

 

Again, this apocalyptic framing finds its response in the responses of more positive technologists. Many of these adapt the framing of religious language to shift attention away from the technology itself, and more onto the 'dark age' mindsets of critics.

With AI increasingly woven into personal lives, its spiritual dimensions are also increasingly pushing individuals toward a more profound, almost religious, engagement with the technology, This shift is evident in the growing prominence of terms like ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystic,’ which are currently two of the leading associations in this area of AI discourse.

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So, who’s driving and participating in the AI x religion conversation? A closer look  reveals three major audience groups, each defined by their shared perspectives and affinites: AI believers (in red), AI sceptics (in green) and AI & religion researchers (in blue).

Among AI believers, Christian conservatives play a pivotal role in promoting Silicon Valley’s tech ideals - helping position the valley’s leaders as quasi-religious figures to those who are enthusiastic about AI's potential.

This kind of audience overlap might have been more surprising in previous years, but has become less so in the wake of Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D Vance's ties to the valley.

This intense faith in technology also influences ostensibly secular cultures, including crypto and AI art communities, who frequently channel their zeal into recognisably religious fervor. This can extend from investing in crypto ventures (contemporary rituals orientated around shared belief) to drawing AI-generated art and pornography (as new aesthetics, which direct the power of AI onto a emotional or physical stimulus).

On the flip side, Humanist Tech Enthusiasts and Progressive Creatives are wary of AI’s evolution into a new belief system, questioning its impact as a new kind of faith.

Away from conversations around awesome power, disciples and unbelievers, we also see audiences who view AI in a more sociological sense, as a new disruptive technology which will destabilise the existing order as the print press, combustion engine or internet did before. These audiences, which include adherents to mainstream faiths, are more inclined to view the AI revolution as something to be navigated through.

From the Valley to the Vatican, the conversation - and the narratives driving it - rumble on.


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This article was created using data from TRAC

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