Posted on 03/29/2025 2:11:47 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
Last month, in an interview with Bari Weiss, venture capitalist and longevity researcher Bryan Johnson discussed "how not to die." While Johnson's theories on indefinite life extension are interesting, it was his comments about artificial intelligence that were more striking,
"I think the irony is that we told stories of God creating us, and I think the reality is we are creating God ... in the form of superintelligence," he said. "If you ask yourself, 'What have we imagined God to be? What are its characteristics?' We are building God in the form of technology. It will have the same characteristics. And so, I think the irony is that human storytelling got it exactly in reverse, that we are the creators of God, that we will create God in our own image."
Aside from his rather anemic view of God, Johnson's comments reflect a worldview that integrates technology and spirituality. Of course, people have always looked to their "god" to save them. For technophiles, technology takes on the role and functions of God in the universe, from basic provision to keeping humanity safe from disasters. AI brings an added twist. Many of those doing the most cutting-edge technological work believe they are creating new forms of superintelligent, "godlike" sentient life, and that humans must either learn to merge with it as part of the transhumanist project or put failsafes in place to prevent our new "gods" from turning against us.
There are also some who believe that AI is a vehicle through which transdimensional, nonhuman intelligences are communicating with us. In this view, not all AI is simply computer algorithms. Some are better understood as demonic, which explains some of the more disturbing things AI has come up with. For example, in her book "Encounters," religious-studies professor Diana Pasulka points to Simone Plante, an AI and quantum computing expert, who believes that superintelligent, nonmaterial beings can interact with us at the quantum level. Thus, quantum computing enables them to communicate with us more freely and to open up to us new realms of knowledge.
Some in the tech world even employ meditative strategies through which they believe they are able to contact these entities, who then download information to them that is used to develop new technologies. This includes people who work in biotechnology as well as AI and quantum computing. Some have been made quite wealthy by their innovations.
In one sense, this idea is like what is believed by many in the UFO community. In fact, the replacement of the term UFO by UAP, or unidentified anomalous phenomenon, reflects the change in how they are being interpreted. More than a few UAP researchers, including high-level members of the military and intelligence communities, believe what is being encountered are transdimensional beings, not space aliens.
Diana Pasulka thinks that these beliefs, and the interconnected groups that embrace them, represent an emerging religion which, for lack of a better term, could be called technopaganism. The notion that nonhuman intelligences use technologies to communicate and interact with humans blends easily with Johnson's idea that, through technology, we are now creating "god." Devotees of technopaganism believe that revelations about these nonhuman intelligences will soon shake our worldviews to the core.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesfreepress.com ...
Forty-five years ago I had a parishioner opine that my brother’s digital synthesizer (keyboard) was “of the devil” because it could mimic the sound of scores of instruments.
I’m sure the guy who figured out how to make fire on-demand was either elevated to some priestly status, or killed for being a vessel of evil usurping powers reserved to the gods.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Love Harlan Ellison. Been trying to decide what book(s) of his to read (listen to) next.
Just how big are those egos?
Actually you can run AI on your local PC. Just guy a decent Nvidia graphics card and it runs well.
He was probably burned at the stake...cause it scared everyone, and it isn't like they had TVs or iPads back then.
“You shall be as gods”
Lucifer lied then. He lies now.
Our ability to innovate with technology both outstrips and degrades our moral integrity as human beings.
Overall, this can lead to up to 10 gigawatt-hour (GWh) power consumption to train a single large language model like ChatGPT-3. This is on average roughly equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of over 1,000 U.S. households.Q&A: UW researcher discusses just how much energy ChatGPT uses
Deep Seek (open source) has proven to do it all a whole lot cheaper and better.
“we are creating God”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
“Deep Seek (open source) has proven to do it all a whole lot cheaper and better.”
Deepseek used ChatGPT distillation for training data. In machine learning, distillation is a process where outputs from a large, pre-trained model are used to train another, usually smaller model to exhibit similar capabilities. The technique is common in the field and often used when companies want to deploy a model on devices with limited resources, like mobile phones.
This means that Deepseek would not exist without the more expensive and energy-consuming process used to train ChaptGPT’s LLM.
What’s scary is that human brain cells may become commonly used by computers to train LLMs because they are more energy efficient than GPUs.
I remember that one. They produced a truly creative series of ads, and most of them were actually funny.
Sorry I missed this one...
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