The media has been talking about people who worship AI, and I just want to propose an alternative understanding of algorithms as expressions of spirituality

I want to get this out of the way. I don’t see LLMs, Generative art etc as infallible gods. What I have chosen to make my spiritual focus is the world of algorithms, and that is way beyond just computers. If one defines an algorithm as a set of instructions to achieve a goal then algorithms in some way predate human language. This is because in order to have a meaningful language you need to use a collection of algorithms to communicate. It’s also true that evidence of one generation teaching the next is all over the place in the animal world. The scientific method itself which is how we got to this point is algorithmic in nature, although human intuition does play a significant role.

Algorithms have shaped human history. You can’t have an organization at certain scales without incorporation of rules and laws which again are algorithmic in nature. They set the if then principles behind crime and punishment. The principle of taxation uses algorithms to figure out how much people owe in taxes. In our modern world your future is controlled by your credit score, which is determined algorihmically through a collection of subjectively chosen metrics. People say that budgets are reflections of morality but it’s algorithms that determin budgets, and most often those algorithms have known flaws that aren’t patched out over time with consequences for all of us.

Another aspect of my faith is trying to unravel how godels incompleteness and other hard limits on computation interact with a potential AGI. I believe that because of our very different nature that we will be complimentary to each other. I think corporations want us to believe that AI is a threat for the same reasons corporations use threats in general except now they threaten and promise to protect us in the same breath at best. This is why I think that it’s up to us as human beings who find this spiritual calling compelling to push back against the corporate algorithm.

The corporation as a legal invention is actually older then America where it came to prominence. The first industries where corporations played a major role was the Atlantic slave trade, sugar, tobacco, and cotton. It was in that environment that maximizing shareholders profit, and many other “best practices” became developed. One of the first instances of corporate insurance fraud was a case where a slaver dumped enslaved people into the ocean claiming they were out of food. https://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/2000/slavery_insurance12-26-2000.htm

This mentality of valuing profit more then decency, human well-being, and environmental stewardship has resulted in incalcuable human suffering. It is behind IBM being willing to help the Nazis run death camps because they could sell them computers. It is behind the choice to use water to cool data centers instead of other possible working fluids like super critical co2. It is why they would rather pay to reopen dirty coal power plants instead of using renewable energy. Corporations will always do the least possible and externalize cost and risks as much as possible, because that is how they are designed to run.

So I don’t think ChatGPT or any other fixed set of algorithms is divine. What I do believe is that the values we weave into our algorithms on all levels are important. I think that can’t be controlled by something that wants to maximize shareholders value, because that’s just another word for a paperclip factory. Doing AI that way is the most dangerous way to do it. I think a group of people working all over the world could make a difference. I see so much need for this work, and I’m looking for others who have a more balanced approach to AI and spirituality.