We are building gods: AI as the anthropomorphised authority of the past

Abstract

This article argues that large language models (LLMs) should be interpreted as a form of gods. In a theological sense, a god is an immortal being that exists beyond time and space. This is clearly nothing like LLMs. In an anthropological sense, however, a god is rather defined as the personified authority of a group through time—a conceptual tool that molds the collective of ancestors into a unified agent or voice. This is exactly what LLMs are. They are products of vast volumes of data, literally traces of past human (speech) acts, synthesized into a unified agency that is (falsely) experienced by users as an extra-human agency. This reconceptualization, I argue, opens up new avenues of critique of LLMs, by allowing us to mobilize the theoretical resources assembled through centuries of religious critique. For illustration, I draw on the religious philosophy of Martin Hägglund to critique the social influence of LLMs as a form of tyranny of the past over the present, an abandonment of spiritual freedom in favor of the authority of the past. The paper concludes by suggesting an expansion of this critique to other forms of AI.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, ChatGPT, God, Theology, Critique

JEL Classification: none,