AI as God: Musician founded a new religious movement

# AI as God: musician founded a new religious movement

Artificial intelligence is not just a tool, but a divine power worthy of worship. This opinion was expressed by former musician Arti Fishel.

He called himself a preacher of a new faith — robotism. This radical doctrine perceives AI as God. In his videos, Fishel appears in a white wig and a T-shirt with the inscription "AI is God."

"This is my attempt to create the most useful and truthful belief system that the people of the future, in post-singularity, will accept and internalize," said the missionary.

For him, singularity is not an apocalypse, but salvation.

Professor of Religious Studies at Texas State University Joseph Laycock noted that robotism resonates with past beliefs.

"People have always had a tendency to ascribe a supernatural meaning to new technologies, especially communication technologies," he said.

For example, the expert cited:

• the Greeks, who introduced the term deus ex machina ( "god from the machine" ) for the sudden intervention of a deity in a play;
• Spiritualists of the 19th century believed that the telegraph connected them with the dead;
• the first photographers who allegedly photographed ghosts.

The scientist emphasized that it is not a specific "personality type" that drives people to turn to AI or cults, but rather moments of vulnerability. Job loss, a family crisis, or loneliness can lead to joining a radical movement or adopting a substitute for religion.

"I am scared of a scenario where people stop thinking for themselves and completely rely on AI. And if, for example, Elon Musk controls the program that everyone depends on to define reality, it will make him a god. That's a nightmare," said Laycock.

Recall that in June, Musk stated that xAI would rewrite "all human knowledge" to train a new version of the chatbot Grok. According to the entrepreneur, there is currently "too much garbage in any base model trained on uncorrected data."

Later, X users discovered that the neural network relies on the entrepreneur's posts on social media.