AI could create religions to control humans, warns Sapiens author Harari
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
There is absolutely no substance and he's no different from a tech bro saying plane tickets will be NFTs in the near future.
There is a precident of sci-fi authors inventing religions that are very popular among the idiot wealthy.
Ever heard of L. Ron?
Chips in brains: https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-is-neural-implant-neuromodula...
AI controlling the world: https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting/pros-and-cons-of-using-...
I'm amazed our idiot primate species is still into the whole invisible guy in outer space thing at all. People are obviously eager to sign up for whatever stupid shit is popular in their communities.
I'm no hirari fanboy, but I'm even less a human fanboy. Our species has demonstrated every kind of idiocy...
BTW, I never said I was good...
He is raising an interesting point, namely that you don't need to do weird sci fi things like implant chips in people's brains in order to control us.
All you need to do is to manipulate language and narratives. This harks back in some ways to his book Sapiens, where he shows how religions bind us together in shared narratives.
The US government is using machine translation to assess asylum cases because they don't want to pay for translators. People will literally be denied asylum and die because of this. That's a real AI problem, and it's affecting people right now.
The world would be better off without pundits like this guy distracting us from the real problems.
Obviously machine translation of asylum cases sounds like a major issue, and becomes ammunition to tell the story of how problematic things could become with continued development. I also suspect arguments will be made like "more cases can be processed this way", which may be true on some time horizons.
This isn't a zero sum game, and if anything, this renewed focus on the dangers of emerging AI tech provides an opportunity to surface situations that are already broken / in danger of harming people.
(I wasn't aware of machine translation for asylum cases, so this article put that on my radar, indirectly).
A proper religion consists of personal rules that, optimally, promote a stable and growing society. Coupled with the necessary doctrine and evangelism needed to propagate the Theogenetic package of this god or that. Sprinkle in some persecution of heretics or the religion will just mutate out of control.
If L.Ron Hubbard can pull a functioning and viable god out of his anointed hindquarters then we should at least give the LLMs a shot.
That's why it seems familiar...
Not so much in the "Evil AGI develops a scheme for human control via religion" sense, but the formation of cults with AI as the primary source of dogma seems absolutely plausible and even likely.
Imagine how much faster ideas like QAnon could spread if the materials were all easily accessible via conversation, with an easy entry point for all newcomers, because no matter your level, the LLM will meet you where you are.
I've known types that would absolutely buy into some "This AI is the second coming of deity" story, and they'd love it because they could engage with said deity directly, something they've spent their entire lives hoping to accomplish via prayer.
I think this should be read as "AI in the hands of humans could create..."