Shall a man make gods unto himself,
and they are no gods?
Jeremiah 16:20
“In the future, we might see the first cults and religions in history whose revered texts were written by a non-human intelligence,” Harari said. “This was never true before. Of course, religions throughout history claimed that their holy books were written by unknown human intelligence, by a non-human entity”.
“This could become true very, very quickly, with far-reaching consequences. In a few years there might be religions that are actually correct,” Harari said.”Just think about a religion whose holy book is written by an AI. That could be a reality in a few years.”
Harari explained that this was an unprecedented possibility.
“It’s the first technology ever that can create new ideas,” he said. “You know, the printing press, radio, television, they broadcast, they spread the ideas created by the human brain, by the human mind. They cannot create a new idea. You know, [Johannes] Gutenberg printed the Bible in the middle of the 15th century; the printing press printed as many copies of the Bible as Gutenberg instructed it, but it did not create a single new page. It had no ideas of its own about the Bible: Is it good? Is it bad? How to interpret this? How to interpret that?”
His vision of an AI-generated religion is grimly dystopian with AI religion used as a form of mind control.
“For thousands of years, prophets and poets and politicians haveused language and storytelling in order to manipulate and to control people and to reshape society,” he said, according to the paper. “Now AI is likely to be able to do it. And once it can, it doesn’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. It can get humans to pull the trigger....Contrary to what some conspiracy theories assume, you don’t really need to implant chips in people’s brains in order to control them or to manipulate them,” Harari noted."
Israel365