AI Unplugged: Losing AI Religion

What happens when you can speak to an amorphous being who has all the answers? #AI

Oh God, You Bot

Generative AI's good at answering questions with authority, even if those answers may be inaccurate or "hallucinated." So it should come as no surprise that an anonymous being capable of answering any question soon transformed into something familiar. Webb Keane, University of Michigan professor of anthropology, explains:

It turns out that very quickly after the development of ChatGPT, we started seeing bots that were specifically designed to give advice on moral and ethical questions. Some of these were explicitly religious. For example, several very quickly showed up that will speak in the voice of Krishna and tell you what to do as a Hindu in a thus-and-such situation. There’s one where you can talk to Jesus Christ. And the one that especially interests me is called AskDelphi. It’s named after the Delphic Oracle of ancient Greece, which was a massively influential institution in Greece that lasted for centuries, in which a medium went into spirit possession and responded to people’s questions.

These "godbots" provide concrete answers to sticky ethical questions. And they're particularly suited to the task because they don't divulge how they come to their answers, in the much the same way oracles and prophets might respond if asked.

An unknowable being speaking with authority? No wonder they act like gods.

The Dangers of Divinity

Even if not every generative AI is treated like a literal deity, it's easy to see the dangers of god-like behavior. If AI becomes an authority, without oversight or transparency, it can easily spread disinformation. More importantly, AI's unregulated, authoritative responses play on our biases; factor in that AI are now smarter than the bulk of humanity, and it's an open question if we even have the cognitive tools to evaluate what AI is offering.

More important, AI is not omniscient. Generative AI leverages an obscure dataset to answer quickly, but that doesn't mean the data set is comprehensive, accurate, or in line with the values of the person asking the question. Or to put it another way, just because someone names a bot after Jesus doesn't mean it's actually modeled after Jesus' teachings.

All this adds up to AI filling a space traditionally held by religion. In the United States, religion continues to decline. Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline in 2023, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

Automation is filling this gap. Countries with a large stock of robots (1 standard deviation above average) experienced a 3% decline in religiosity each decade. Conversely, countries with a stock 1 standard deviation below average experienced a slight uptick in religiosity. Similarly, those who considered programming important to professional roles (1 standard deviation higher than average in exposure to AI) were 45% less likely to believe in God than those with average exposure.

Why?

Instrumental Value

Automation’s impact on religious faith may have to do with what the researchers call the “instrumental” value of religion:

“Historically, people have deferred to supernatural agents and religious professionals to solve instrumental problems beyond the scope of human ability,” they write. “These problems may seem more solvable for people working and living in highly automated spaces.”

The parallels are impossible to ignore. We already ask Google in our darkest moments for help, and when we ask Amazon for gifts, it sends them to us. Digital deities have been lurking on the Internet for some time, even if we don't pray to them in physical churches.

We know how easy it is for humans to deceive each other on the Internet; what happens when AI, which is smarter and faster than us, starts answering our prayers?

Please Note: The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or any other organization.