A.I. Is Increasingly Framed in Religious Terms, New York Times Says

A growing religious fervor surrounds artificial intelligence in American culture, with public figures and everyday users increasingly casting chatbots and personalization algorithms in godlike terms, The New York Times reported. The article cites examples ranging from Joe Rogan’s suggestion on the "American Alchemy" podcast that "Jesus was born out of a virgin mother; what's more virgin than a computer?" and "It reads your mind, and it loves you," to public predictions about apocalyptic or messianic figures tied to rapid A.I.

advances by Paul Kingsnorth and Peter Thiel. It notes that the release of ChatGPT in 2022 helped make a technological revolution feel plausible, and that commentators such as Greg Epstein have described messianic hope or fear as natural responses. Researchers and writers quoted in the piece trace the phenomenon to a long human tendency to anthropomorphize and seek superior insight, linking modern chatbots to historical forms of divination like the Delphic oracle.

Lucy Suchman described the tendency to "ascribe full intelligence on the basis of partial evidence," Webb Keane compared the effect to technologies for superior insight, and Meghan O'Gieblyn called the slippage into religious language "almost inevitable." The article also highlights examples such as "godbots," reports of "chatbot psychosis," and social media formats that treat algorithmic recommendations as uncanny intimacies.

The Times piece emphasizes that much A.I.

Key Topics

Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Chatgpt, Chatbots, Openai, Joe Rogan