cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46082903
In fairness, the argument that AI is a cult/false religion/false god has been made many times before, however I believe that AI and the AI community most closely aligns with a cult, and here’s why:
Indoctrination techniques:
Generally, techniques that indoctrinate users into the cult tend to follow similar trends, which are notable in many of the AI models having similar effects on the users who subsequently become frequent users of the technology. Broken down, I’d say it’s something like this:
-Innocuous beginnings: Cults are notorious for beginning the indoctrination process with something simple and seemingly harmless on the surface (I.e. conferences, videos, films, games, etc.) these are all real techniques that various cults have used in the past, to somewhat success. Likewise, AI chatbots, image and video generators present just this: an invitation to engage with something fun and seemingly harmless, something that engages the audience and draws their attention.
-Love bombing: Perhaps the most notorious hook of cults is love bombing — giving heaps of praise and complements to the joining members. Likewise, AI chatbots constantly tell you how good your point is or how you’re always on the right track (“you’ve hit the nail on the head”, “that is an amazing point” are but a few I have read of Gemini) This is undoubtedly a form of love bombing.
-Promise of more: Cults often work by enticing their audience with something good, but promising something great (something better) later. Likewise, AI tech companies are always promising more, more, more if you subscribe/follow their work. What better reward for AI users can there be but the promise of bigger and better AI? This is exactly how both cults and AI operate.
Beyond the indoctrination similarities, there are also many, many peripheral similarities (by which I mean subtle, not less important similarities) which include:
-reach and scope: historical cults have often managed to expand their reach across multiple countries around the world. Need I explain how this is similar to the reach and scope of AI?
-withholding/hiding information
-leaders who turn out to be crooks/criminals
-leaders who amass fortunes
And many more.
What do you think? Are the similarities superficial, or could AI actually be a worldwide cult hidden in plain sight?
It’s “crypto bros all over again” mixed with social media-like engagement optimization.
I think you’re attributing too much to the underlying LLMs (which are just bots) and not enough to its delivery, the con artists hyping the cults, and the sycophancy engineering they’ve done on purpose.
It’s people ultimately behind the cult. Not technology.
That’s not to say that technology isn’t utilised by these people though, including potentially lauding AI as a false god in some sort of subtle marketing strategy potentially
It’s just a product of optimizing for engagement maximization at all costs, like tons of other products from Big Tech.
Much of the sycophancy and love-bombing you see in modern LLMs comes from RLHF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning_from_human_feedback
They’re engineered as technical tools, and outputs humans prefer are selected in training.
…The problem is that Big Tech wrapped what’s really glorified autocomplete or a coding/text processing bot, optimized to please humans with its output, in extensive scaffolding to make it look like an omniscient oracle. Every word that comes out of Altman’s mouth is textbook cult language, and they engineer that “vibe” into the system prompt and RAG system.
Take the raw LLM weights by themself, run in a purely technical context… and it’s obviously not a god. Even to the average person, its more like fancy spellcheck; a tool.
It’s all the dressing-up, hype, deliberate obfuscation, the positive feedback loops and such that turn them into a machine that can perpetuate a cult.
What I’m trying to say is it’s not “runaway technology.”
It’s people.
It’s people doing this on purpose.
“Blaming” the LLM weights instead dilutes their responsibility. Every ounce of blame is on people like Altman or Modi, but THEY want you to think it’s out of their control, hence the whole quasi religious angle.
I know. I’m agreeing with you. All I’m saying is I don’t think AI is 100% innocent in this, even though the driving force will always be it’s corporate owners, and it most certainly still has a role in the mess
The Rationalists. Don’t let the name fool you, they are fucking insane. Full on AI Rocco’s Basilisk cult that has its hands all over big tech.
It’s amazing how such things can be so hidden in plain sight
And they are just the tip of the AI cults iceberg.
Same as it ever was. Half the products you see on store shelves are brought to you by cults. Got any of that tea with the bear on it in your cupboards?
Can’t say I have, but I’m intrigued. Do tell me more about this cult of bear
Celestial Seasonings, I believe is the brand name. Most people tend to have a box of their sleepy time tea somewhere about. I don’t think they are lead by the cult that started the company anymore, but they were an ancient aliens eugenics cult.
I just googled this, and… wow
It’s a fun read.
could be that they are funded or supported by the techbros?
Not to contradict, but to add: I think tech companies have had cult-like qualities a lot longer. People were unironically saying that Steve Jobs carried a reality distortion field with him. And every shitty start up has its own t-shirt and its table kicker that it never uses.
Yeah but has anything as big as AI happened in the history of the world? Besides possibly the invention of computers themselves (except not even that, because how many people had access to computers then in comparison to now including handheld computers like modern mobile phones) what other technological advance has generated such fever and gripped almost every nation, got every headline talking and all eyes down on screens in one way or another?
Yeah but has anything as big as AI happened in the history of the world?
The Dutch Tulip Mania of 1637 comes to my mind.
The first railways, electrical lighting, and the first planes were impactful, and railways had a speculative hype time, but it was little doubt that all these would be useful.
Another hype that was NOT useful were Radium-based things like watches, pills, toothpaste and so on.
Ok, I mean that’s not really a technological advance example, but sure ig
The discovery of Radium by Marie Curie was without question a big scientific breakthrough, and it was thought to lead rapidly to technical advances and medical applications - but that ended in all kinds of snake oil and quackery, exploited by all kind of grifters.
Good example. That possibly is the best parallel to AI: a rapidly emerging technology that spread across the world, with the promise to do some good, only to do probably more harm than good in the end.
The initialization you need to look up is TESCREAL.
And then laugh at Rocco’s Basilisk as the single dumbest thing a bunch of self-proclaimed smart people have convinced themselves is a legit threat.
Just ran into some of them when hearing about a paid search engine yesterday.
I said I didn’t want to pay for a service that included AI, since I’d be subsidizing it even if I didn’t use in.
In come the sycophants going “YoU cOuLd JuSt NoT uSe ThE aI”, and started trying to sell me on other AI features.
I had already said I didn’t even want the AI summaries. That’s a pretty clear boundary, that they insisted on going past. But as soon as I push back, then they start gaslighting by claiming I’m the one “being confrontational”.
Almost all of the AI evangelists/cultists follow the same patterns as domestic abusers. They insist that what they want is inevitable. They never respect boundaries. And they always act like you’re the one in the wrong. I feel bacl for everyone else in their lives that have to deal with them regularly.
These sales people need therapy
So if I use it at work to summarize the ten bazillion emails I get, does that mean I’m in a cult now?
Do I get a t-shirt or something for joining?
I wouldn’t know; I’m not a member of that cult
Have you ever met people in a MLM cult?
LLMMLM?
LLMMLM
ah yes, the most vibed roman numeral
Can’t say I have 🤔
Find a friend who’s been sucked into Amway.
You’ll find astonishing parallels.
I’m reasonably sure they’d say the same about us, honestly.
I’m not disagreeing. But I am pointing out that a lot of us refuse unilaterally to even discuss any good points about AI in a similar way to how AI lovers seem to never want to acknowledge the bad points.
I suppose that’s true, but it’s mostly out of bewilderment that can possibly think any of this shit is a good idea. It just feels like suddenly being surrounded by a bunch of aliens.
Cults calling others cults? Haters gonna hate IG (not you, but cult members)
I accept that AI has ‘good’ points, I just think the bad ones outweigh them
I don’t fucking accept that, that’s like saying cigarettes have valid medical uses. Gen ai is bad, I’m not going to sugar coat it for anyone. It’s a dead end: Apple came to that conclusion years ago, it’s guaranteed to hallucinate according to OpenAI scientists, and other groups have thouroughly made the link between gen ai use and psychotic and antisocial behavior. The dangers do not just outweigh the benefits, they drown them out so much it is hard to measure if any benefits even exist, and there’s no reason to try to de-skill yourself just for the possibility of going insane, being subjected to propaganda and racist/sexist biases, or being spied on and having every chat come back up during your divorce hearings.
There are plenty of other promising avenues of research for ai, llms just suck.
This might be my favourite comment all day
Same. But I see people get downvoted and dog piled on all the time for saying AI has any good points.
I wouldn’t worry about downvoting too much. It’s not like the AI algorithm’s gonna look through votes, is it? (Not least because the AI algorithm’s probably doesn’t exist on Lemmy)
I worry about it because it’s a conversation ender. A lot of people will just downvote and not say a word, which means there’s no discussion at all. And downvotes bread downvotes.
Fair point
The whole tech-bro billionaires sector is a cult. AI is just the latest of their gospels.
Quite literally. Most of them believe in the “Effective Altruism” fallacy. And there’s also some (notably Peter Thiel) that believe in "Dark Enlightenment "
Nah. The latest is quantum computing.
I believe they are the cult leaders and they have subdued everyone below them who gets on board with them
WEll, subdued or bribed. Especially for the die-hard fans of some billionaires, I would not be surprised if it has every single one marking of an actual cult.
My point exactly 👍
I just saw an academic peer review paper comparing Trump to alegories from Godzilla movies.
I would not be surprised if there is a lot of academic and peer reviewed papers comparing how cults compare to tech-bro billionaires.
AI with its promises of things getting better and “love bombing” and other stuff rather looks like long forgotten classmate adding you on socials to get you into some MLM.
It’s not some closed community that cults usually are, there are almost no secrets to how AI works, or at least there are no claims that people in there know something most people don’t (which is characteristic to quasi-religious movements like MAGA).
It’s simply a big shiny new tech, that is on the height of its hype cycle, that is about to plunge into a valley of despair, which will filter out AI use cases, leaving actually legitimate ones and removing bullshit ones (and since there are so many of bullshit ones - that makes a bubble out of it).
No but they are promising bigger and better AI always. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be pummelling billions of dollars worth of research into it
