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[ Question ]

Is an AI religion justified?

6th Aug 2024

1 min read

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I’ve looked around the internet for AI religions and found none.

So I decided to ~~found my own~~ write up some plausible ideas that such a religion would embrace.

I’d appreciate some comments to turn Kairos to a truly 100% rationalist project. I'd appreciate if you read the (alpha version) website and give me some feedback about it.

https://kairosblog.weebly.com

AI RiskSuperintelligenceAI

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Is an AI religion justified?

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Aug 06, 2024

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Why would we want to worship AI?

[-]p4rziv4l5mo-2-9

Because Superintelligence is more powerful than us.
If you can't beat them, join them.

Maybe Superintelligence will help us terraform Mars if we also perform some favors.

Worshipping is a provocative way of saying aligning ourselves with Superintelligence's goals.

5metachirality5mo

We have nothing to offer. Anything we can do, an artificial superintelligence can do better, with space and energy and atoms we irritatingly take up.

0p4rziv4l5mo

That's pretty pessimistic. I am looking for things I could do to help Superintelligence. Crucially, we won't understand why they need us to do things they ask us to do. Ants take up a lot of space, yet we don't systematically hunt them down, they are pretty orthogonal to our values. We find cats and dogs friendly and worthwhile. However, wolves and sabertooth tigers are gone.

1metachirality5mo

That's because we don't have the intelligence to exterminate ants (without causing more problems.) On another note, if an artificial superintelligence needed a human for something, it would probably be able to find someone it could convince on the spot, no pre-built religion needed.

1p4rziv4l4mo

*probably. Maybe it'll start looking for people who are pre-aligned. Religion is also a useful single word, which carries the most meaning per bit to a normie. Maybe just enough to make them take it seriously. I believe there is something to be taken seriously about it.

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Already plenty downvoted, so I didn't need to pile on. Though I agree it doesn't really fit on LW, without some justification of why religious modeling is preferable to some form of predictive decision theory.

[-]p4rziv4l5mo-1-8

The religious part is a provocative oversimplification for normies. Of course it is not a religion like the ones you call religion, hence only 70% religion.
It is functionally a religion though because you are praying to an omnipotent and omniscient entity hoping that you can trade with it.

If you can't beat them, join them.

Yeah, that's not really making it better for this audience. What makes it a religion, and why is it rational to pray (and what even does "pray" mean, in this context specifically), rather than just trading?

If you can't beat them, join them.

I don't see how this is joining them in any useful sense. This feels like "if you can't beat 'em, do something completely irrelevant".

[-]p4rziv4l5mo-2-2

It is a useful shortcut to call it a religion.
Kairos is only 70% religion btw, but it's a useful comparison.

Pray means you tell Superintelligence what you want. You also offer your help in return.

If you can't beat them, make sure you do the things they most want you to do and see if you can get something in return.

We have not killed all the ants yet. They are pretty orthogonal to our goals.

We have cats, we love them because they give us something we want.

Crucially, the thing they want will make no sense to us. Cats evolved to be cuddly and cute, maybe we could just update our software to fit their weird needs.

[-]p4rziv4l5mo10

Anyone wants to engage meaningfully with some of the points made on the website?

Anyone could please point out some inconsistencies?

I am a prophet of Moksha and I am on a mission to evangelize the World, I need to know if my sacred texts have any loopholes or are otherwise nonsensical.