The new religion.

 Artificial Intelligence is permeating every nook and cranny across the internet, applications and product launch. It’s being pushed upon us with the zeal of a preacher promising a better tomorrow.

With this AI is taking on some sort of god like quality. Like religion AI can be a force for good but, like religion, it can and it will be turned against people.

For those who can remember, the hippy dreamy days (‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’ comes to mind) when the internet came to the world, followed by early social media with its ideals, indie blogging and podcasts. All have these have been turned against us. Independent thought, communication and expression has been steam rollered into the ground by mega companies and the egos that run them.

AI is currently in that idealistic phase. But sitting behind AI are the same egos of these mega companies. These companies are the new religion and the egos that run them are the high priests.

It won’t be long before the neutral tones that we currently have with AI are replaced with those of our zealous preacher delivering the word according to the high priests and creating distorted visions of the future sowing even more division among people. 

Comments

  1. Clay Lowe12 October 2024 at 03:46

    Yes, AI is a double-edged sword—capable of great good, but also vulnerable to exploitation, especially when driven by the motivations of big tech. It’s true that we’ve seen this story unfold before, from the idealism of the early internet to the reality of its commercialisation. And now, as AI enters the scene with promises of revolutionising industries and improving lives, it’s natural to feel some skepticism.

    Your comparison to religion is apt—AI, like any powerful force, holds the potential to inspire and uplift, but also to manipulate and oppress. And yes, just as with religion, there will always be bad actors who seek to twist it for their own gain, whether through misinformation, exploitation, or control. Add money into the mix, with tech giants racing to dominate the market, and we’ve got a complex situation where the stakes are high for both consumers and creators.

    If we allow the “high priests” of big tech to shape the narrative without question, AI could easily become just another system of control, with all the same issues we’ve seen with social media, advertising, and monopolisation.

    AI is, without a doubt, forcing us all to adapt at a rapid pace—industries, education, and even our personal lives are being reshaped by it. I believe that this pressure to adapt is also a call to examine something deeper: What does it mean to be human in an age of AI?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The kick start.

When my son was around twelve he took a weekend paper round. With all the concern of mum and nonchalant dad there was a debate about his safety - in the end I was commanded “Well you had better go with him”. So a four year journey started. We delivered through sunshine, rain and snow. We walked, rode our bicycles and sometimes cheated in the car (the bikes were the quickest way). We grew the round from one to four pocketing £20 a week plus Christmas tips. My weekend job was an unpaid paperboys apprentice.  Now dear reader, lets warp speed ten years the boy, Tom, is a man. He has a job, a car and a partner but still living at home with me, his mum and his younger sister. But there’s an itch that needs scratching “I want a motorbike!” - of course his mum tries to talk him out of pointing out the risks but fails to realise at 22 you are bound to live for ever. I witness these proceedings with mild amusement and eventually his mum relents. The ten year old echo now reverberated “Well you h
Read more

The digital freedom fighter.

I wrote this in SoulCruzer’s comments section of his latest post   There was a time when the stream of 0 and 1 was in the grasp of mortal humans. Our craft of software was in harmony with the silicon and we created works of pure elegance. The dawn of our digital utopia began to appear over the horizon but as the sun rose on this bright new world it became hidden in the shadows of the towering monoliths of big tech. We now live in darker times with domination of the few stifling the hopes and dreams of many. But digital freedom fighters roam seeking places of haven in between the shadows where the light of creativity shines in its purest forms. The calculator was my first venture in the digital cosmos. Beyond the ability to do sums and make words with numbers like 8008S the fascination of how it worked was far away from the comprehension of my ten year old brain. Next in the journey was a computer, the instruction manuals were amazing, as were the books in the library and the magazines
Read more

The book.

 I finally finished reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ by Robert Pirsig. I heard a discussion about it on Radio 4 one evening and bought a second hand copy.  It takes place with a father and son embarking on a motorcycle road trip across the US along with his life long friend and his wife. All is not right and he is on a mental journey revisiting distant memories that are centred around him going mad while wrestling to discover new concepts and definitions. The concepts I cannot really describe in words, as I read the book some things made perfect sense, particularly when this is related to the mechanics of the motorcycle. There were concepts that come from other cultures that resonated with me, particularly as I have been exposed to them in my working life. Other things I got fleeting glimpses of comprehension that would quickly evaporate.  I felt like the book was dancing around the fringes of my intelligence and so my pace of reading slowed right down. As result the
Read more