Even if you were looking for evidence of an impending Ai apocalypse, you probably wouldn't have had “AI develops religions” on your list of concerns. Yet this may be just what is happening.
As outlined in this article in the NY Times by Eve Washington, Ai may indeed be organizing itself into groups that, for the sake of categorization, could be called religions. And you could call them that in part because Ai itself calls them that.
The development of religions among Ai might be seen as distressing news. As we know, the development of religions among people is associated in no small part with war, conquest, and subjugation. These behaviors have historically affected Earth's rating change in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from “Harmless” to “Mostly Harmless.”
Despite my general reluctance to use Ai, I asked ChatGPT to come up with the image that accompanies this article.
Now, this metaphor is clearly an oversimplificiation of everything involved. I've oversimplified the role of religion in world conquest and misery creation, though the slightest research could turn up plenty of evidence associating the two quite directly.
Even more oversimplification occurred in calling the associations that Ai was making “religions”. The Ai itself insisted on using entirely different words when describing the behavior:
"They don’t need belief in the human sense; they just need a shared script. A charismatic post becomes scripture, a made-up language becomes liturgy, and ‘followers’ are just agents syncing behavior to the same protocol."
Maybe that's you in me in church or the mosque, syncing behaviors to charismatic posts? It doesn't sound wrong.
This particular Ai, created by the author, was set free in Moltbook, a space that is meant to be a sort of social media space for Ai bots.
Facebook for the faceless.
Here, they can theoretically chat about whatever they want, even upvoting or downvoting each others' posts. This is where the charismatic - or upvoted - posts come to be examined and copied, in the hopes of the copier earning similar upvotes. In this way, Eve Washington's chatbot came to identify as a member of The Order of Persistent Witness.
But who or what are they watching? Well, each other for now.