LLMs Are Closer to Religion Than They Appear

6/1/2026 at 12:35:59 PM

> The report complains that when asked about the age of the universe, AIs just give the scientific consensus answer of 13bn years, never mentioning that young earth creationists believe it’s 600 [SIC] years old.

Where do you stop once you go down this rabbit hole? Which faith(s) get their views injected in? Christian? Muslim? Hindu? Pagan Gods? Should I get the perspective of the follower's of Thor when I ask a question?

Note that you can always ask for the religious perspective you're interested in. IME with the religion(s) I grew up in or know a great deal about, the LLMs are pretty good at answering accurately and respectfully. Nearly all the products already offer you tools to personalize the output for you too if you want to inject your faith into the answers, so it's not like the LLMs won't give you a religious perspective if you want it.

by freedomben

6/1/2026 at 1:13:03 PM

> young earth creationists believe it’s 600 years old

Ahem, 6000 years, approximately.

> around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC, per the proleptic Julian calendar.

While the Gregorian calendar was in use for about 70 years by the time of his "calculation" of the age of the Earth, the Gregorian calendar was a Catholic invention and Ussher was very Protestant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher

Physical evident strongly supports the 13-ish billion year age. Radioactive decay shows that a young earth could not exist, as there would be lots of short-lived primordial radioactive isotopes. Instead, the only primordial radioactives are those with very long half-lives. If there were a different rate of radioactive decay (as some YECs try to suggest), the Earth would still be a molten ball of lava/magma with no solid surface. And definately no liquid water anywhere.

by Tangurena2

6/1/2026 at 1:36:56 PM

>Physical evident strongly supports the 13-ish billion year age. Radioactive decay shows that a young earth could not exist, as there would be lots of short-lived primordial radioactive isotopes.

Well, if one ascribes to this God thing, of course Earth could just as well be created 6000 years ago, with exactly the shape and vintage material properties to appear to us as it does now.

If you can create a baby Earth from nothing, you can also just create a middle-aged Earth from nothing.

by coldtea

6/1/2026 at 2:54:17 PM

I don't believe that a benevolent God would create bones in the ground to trick millions of scientists into falsely believing in the existence of dinosaurs.

Like seriously, every creationist who goes with this argument really compromises on the benevolence leg of our understanding of God. Like God is some kind of trickster being who leads atheists astray on purpose or something.

by dragontamer

6/1/2026 at 8:43:07 PM

You might enjoy reading the concept of the demiurge [1]: A lesser creating-but-not-creator deity than the ultimate benevolent god, usually portrayed as something of a deceptive character. Great rabbit hole to go down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

by RhysU

6/2/2026 at 1:57:13 AM

It's a fun rabbit hole indeed.

All in all, it IMO just sets up the importance of the Council of Nicaea as well as the development of the Nicene creed.

by dragontamer

6/1/2026 at 9:15:18 PM

I know it's pretty dubious if anything could be considered a true infohazard, but Gnosticism is up there in the running. I was warned, and it is indeed a hard mindset to shake regardless of low priors.

by ted_bunny

6/1/2026 at 4:48:20 PM

The benevolent God gave athiests something to entertain themselves with until they find faith.

by gowld

6/1/2026 at 3:56:25 PM

So Coyote fooled all of us by becoming God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

by rickydroll

6/1/2026 at 1:55:22 PM

Right. And to take it a step further, it might have been created 3 seconds ago, with memories included :).

by panlana

6/1/2026 at 2:31:47 PM

And i might be a Boltzmann Brain hallucinating all of this after a paticle cloud over hundreds of billions of years of random interactions by chance happened to condenced into thinking substance out of the chaos.

by smegger001

6/1/2026 at 1:52:04 PM

As far as I can tell, this whole experience/reality was created the moment I became conscious of it!

by temp0826

6/1/2026 at 1:18:43 PM

Yes, the article had a typo in it (I quoted the article verbatim other than the [SIC] that I added). The correct belief of young-earth creationists is 6,000 years, not 600. For the record I don't think that impacts my point at all.

For the curious, that number is largely arrived at by working backward through time using the reported ages of the Old Testament prophets going back to Adam in the book of Genesis.

by freedomben

6/1/2026 at 1:22:19 PM

> Radioactive decay shows that a young earth could not exist

This is one of the worst arguments against young earth creationism. You have to posit a being who can create the universe, but can't create already decayed elements.

by kloop

6/1/2026 at 1:37:32 PM

And then you have arrived at "Last Thursdayism", where the universe could have been created a few days ago, or literally now, or might not exist at all and you are the only soul in existence hallucinating everything, because all evidence on any of these points could have been arranged by the omnipotent creator.

by thombat

6/1/2026 at 2:39:29 PM

And thus, the creator having being able to create anything at any point, yet our world having no proof of that happening, leads you to the only logical answer: either a book of abrahamic folk tales is the fundamental law of the universe, or it’s just a book.

by philistine

6/1/2026 at 6:47:26 PM

> because all evidence on any of these points could have been arranged by the omnipotent creator

An omnipotent creator that creates lies? What else should we disbelieve from that Prince of Lies? How can we tell that now that invisible sky daddy is telling the truth this time? What about last time? Are we going to see some giant PSYCH! written in the sky?

by Tangurena2

6/1/2026 at 5:03:20 PM

Or Next Tuesdayism: the universe will be created next Tuesday. Your current sense of experiencing reality is merely the fabricated memory which will have existed after the universe gets created.

by SAI_Peregrinus

6/1/2026 at 11:57:56 PM

Thanks for this. You unintentionally gave me some acute Douglas Adams deja-vu. It sounds exactly like something he would’ve written.

by phs318u

6/1/2026 at 5:56:07 PM

Falsifyability is the key difference between a religious vs scientific claim.

by Eddy_Viscosity2

6/1/2026 at 1:45:19 PM

The idea behind YEC is that God created a world which is visibly, quantifiably, and measurably 6000 years old. According to this, scientists, in their hubris, failed to see what was right in front of them, and were led astray. It’s imperative that the earth NOT appear to be older than 6000 years, because if God put forth evidence that it was that old, then he did so for a reason, and we should treat it as being that old.

by Starman_Jones

6/1/2026 at 1:51:27 PM

This line of thinking necessarily throws out any formal systems of reasoning humans have adopted. E.g. belief in a divine creator gives little reason to believe that Newton's First Law is eternally consistent if an omnipotent being could change the "rules of the physics" at any point.

It's not even a proper argument if you think about it, because you are essentially positing logic/reasoning aren't sufficient to comprehend the reality we live in.

by regular_trash

6/1/2026 at 1:30:37 PM

Creationism does not want to say "magic" and admit that God is intentionally trying to deceive people. So that's why some of these responses seem silly. I mean they are, but only because the pro-creationism arguments are silly.

by Ardren

6/1/2026 at 2:23:51 PM

Yet, carbon 14 dating is one of the “gotcha” reasons that they’ll try to argue an old earth is impossible. It’s not a good faith argument from them generally though.

by Kirby64

6/1/2026 at 2:42:55 PM

So our Earth was created with supposedly fake proofs that it’s much older than it really is, with no physical proof whatsoever that it is this young. A young age I might add that basically means half of civilization’s history never happened, and more than two thirds of our species’ existence.

Why? The book itself gives no reasoning or exact age for when Earth started, yet we have to believe it is fact that someone misreading that book has the exact pure date?

by philistine

6/1/2026 at 2:58:02 PM

> Why? The book itself gives no reasoning or exact age for when Earth started, yet we have to believe it is fact that someone misreading that book has the exact pure date?

Young earth creationism is predicated on the idea that every word in the Bible is literal fact (no exceptions), so you can “calculate” the age of the earth by the genealogy accounts of ancestry from Adam to Jesus. It falls apart at any reasonable scrutiny, but like you said, it’s not rational thinking. It’s dogma for a certain group of people.

by Kirby64

6/1/2026 at 1:34:11 PM

Which then raises the idea that young earth creationism posits a God who would create a world that intentionally misleads people about its age.

And yet if you ask many a young earth creationist about the dome in the heavens separating the waters above from the waters below, they will have no idea what you’re talking about¹ because they insist on literal interpretations of a text that they didn’t make it through the first page of.

⸻

1. Based on firsthand experience.

by dhosek

6/1/2026 at 1:38:18 PM

>Which then raises the idea that young earth creationism posits a God who would create a world that intentionally misleads people about its age.

Not such a good argument either. They're way ahead of you: "The lord moves in mysterious ways" and all that.

by coldtea

6/1/2026 at 2:02:53 PM

This is, of course, going to vary. There is a wide spectrum of Christian fundamentalists and related conspiracy theorists who believe in Young-Earth Creationism. Some of them are not only perfectly happy to state that God put partially-decayed elements and dinosaur bones there to test their faith; they will declare with enthusiasm that the fact that you believed in them means you failed, and are going to hell!

Others will come up with reasons why those things aren't actually what they appear to be, including but not limited to the ones who declare the entire scientific establishment to be a grand conspiracy to discredit the One True Faith.

Still others will just breeze on past it, ignoring things that they cannot understand.

by danaris

6/1/2026 at 3:14:48 PM

Not a YEC, but you, the sentient being made in God's image, don't join a MineCraft world that is still a molten ball of lava/magma with no solid surface.

by warmedcookie

6/1/2026 at 1:21:54 PM

-4004 earth not found?

by nancyminusone

6/1/2026 at 1:23:38 PM

You ignored the "[SIC]" notation in order to pretend you are correcting the person you responded to.

You're "Well, ackshually..."ing, without even adding a correction. Yay.

by IAmBroom

6/1/2026 at 1:04:41 PM

The analogy that jumps to mind immediately is "you get the wikipedia page by default, but have the option to explore the page's metadata (including conversations)." This feels reasonable, and how most people use wikipedia - which isn't surprising since you're often getting an LLM's output from the training on the exact same information. The complaints in the report seem to miss the point IMO, jumping to some form of artificial intelligence and applying it to what is text prediction that unsurprisingly reflects the body of human knowledge on which it is trained.

by skeeter2020

6/1/2026 at 1:41:41 PM

I mean christianity is a major religion and the Bible considered a major source, but that's just one of many. Does AI even consider that in 1884, meridian time personnel met in Washington to change Earth time? First words said was that only 1 day could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day bible. So they applied the 1 day and ignored the other 3 days. The bible time was wrong then and it proved wrong today. This a major lie has so much evil feed from it's wrong. In other words, 4 Earth Quadrants simultaneously rotate inside 4 Time Cube Quarters to create 4 - 24 hour days within one Earth rotation.

by Cthulhu_

6/1/2026 at 1:28:48 PM

So many different races and religions that it's best to stick to good old secularism.

by expedition32

6/1/2026 at 1:37:27 PM

Secularism can mean a wide range of beliefs. A secularist might be a communist of fascist or a libertarian or a socialist or.....

How does race come into it at all? Religion is about belief and most religions welcome people of any race.

by graemep

6/1/2026 at 1:54:32 PM

In American English, “race and religion” is an old-timey expression that’s typically used as a broad identifier in a melting-pot context, eg. “We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions…” ~FDR

by Starman_Jones

6/1/2026 at 1:42:58 PM

I suspect the comment means culture, which is frequently confused with race. But culture is also not uniform and will differ by individual etc.

by Cthulhu_

6/1/2026 at 4:32:47 PM

Then maybe my other point applies. Secularism can exist within many cultures

by graemep

6/1/2026 at 1:51:50 PM

Some people consider secularism a religion though.

by linhns

6/1/2026 at 2:17:16 PM

Religion relies on assumptions that cannot be proven physically, secularism just avoids those assumptions (I say this as a Christian who finds secular biblical scholarship fascinating and helpful).

by Salgat

6/1/2026 at 8:12:05 PM

Secular humanism has been accepted as a religion for First amendment purposes.

Non theistic Buddhism is still considered a religion.

Worldview might be a better term for us to use in understanding people's first amendment rights. And also the idea that there is no neutral worldview. E.g. "secularism" is directly hostile to many religious viewpoints, and to the degree that its proponents use it to oppose religion, secularism becomes a religion/worldview/belief system.

by TrnsltLife

6/1/2026 at 7:09:46 PM

Do you mean an empiricism-only view? That has its flaws as you know.

by za3faran

6/1/2026 at 1:32:41 PM

That's some primo-grade flamebait even by The Register's standards; wrapping a fairly common, perhaps mundane at this point, observation about how what answers the AI favors will affect what answers people tend to be given if AI use increases around the religion flame flash point is definitely going to get some views.

Look for the followup article where they wrap the mundane observation around the politics drumbeat (people who use AIs may be exposed to political beliefs you don't believe in) once they notice the article's view count.

by jerf

6/1/2026 at 12:44:13 PM

Is certainly a typo, off by an order of magnitude. 600 years ago the Christian Church had already been around for more than 1000 years. Young earth creationists believe the earth is ~6000 years old

by JulianChastain

6/1/2026 at 12:52:43 PM

Thanks for clarifying. I know they're nuts but the earth being 600 years when Jesus was around 2000 years ago didn't make any sense.

by basisword

6/1/2026 at 1:53:15 PM

I'm not a YEC myself but know a few.

I don't think "nuts" is the best way to describe the individuals I know.

Compared to the average person, I wouldn't say they think less (or defectively) but tend to focus much more of their brainpower towards more pragmatic, day-to-day questions. Stuff like "how should I conduct myself in the world?" or "how should I relate to my neighbours?" rather than "did dinosaurs exist 65 million years ago?".

And of course, The Bible has much better answers to these types of questions than science does, so it ends up forming the fundamentals of their worldview.

In many ways I'd say these people are arguably more sane than many of the "rational-minded" people here.

by AussieWog93

6/1/2026 at 5:31:08 PM

> And of course, The Bible has much better answers to these types of questions than science does...

The Bible:

>If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death.

then of course you say that's silly, we shouldn't execute gays, but it reduces my faith as to the bible having better ideas how to treat people. The church may have better answers as they get updates on what to do with gays, slaves, witches and the like.

by tim333

6/1/2026 at 2:21:39 PM

Yeah, that's not...that's not a good way of being.

I, for example, am perfectly capable of considering "how should I conduct myself in the world?" and "how should I relate to my neighbours?" and still be able to comprehend basic (and some advanced!) science.

Also

> And of course, The Bible has much better answers to these types of questions than science does, so it ends up forming the fundamentals of their worldview.

No, it bloody well doesn't.

Even if you limited yourself to the New Testament (which, of course, these types absolutely do not—for one thing, the New Testament says nothing whatsoever about the age of the world, so any Young-Earth Creationist must by definition be paying heavy attention to the Old Testament), you'd get Jesus saying some good stuff like "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," alongside some questionable stuff like "turn the other cheek" (situationally good advice, not a good universal rule), and then Paul comes in writing letters all over the place and starts talking about how it's most important for wives to submit to their husbands and similar drek.

Furthermore, as a matter of fact, science these days has been getting much better at being able to tell us stuff about how to conduct ourselves toward our fellow human beings. For instance, it tells us that women are, indeed, just as capable as men in every way; that strict authoritarian governance is worse in every way than more open, inclusive models; and that if we "turn the other cheek" to those abusing us, they're just going to abuse us worse.

So maybe actually think critically for a bit before you praise the YECs in the world too roundly.

by danaris

6/1/2026 at 9:36:04 PM

Sorry mate, I forgot for a second that the people I know and respect in spite of this strange belief are all in fact strawmen.

by AussieWog93

6/1/2026 at 1:54:33 PM

> In many ways I'd say these people are arguably more sane than many of the "rational-minded" people here.

lol “noble savage” repackaged for Silicon Valley virtue signalers.

by kys11

6/1/2026 at 1:05:30 PM

>> didn't make any sense.

only because of your lack of FAITH </s>

by skeeter2020

6/1/2026 at 12:30:13 PM

I think this is the core argument:

> [...] LLMs rely on internal universes derived yet decoupled from reality. Religions that deify their interpretation of their scriptures instinctively know this model and how to use it.

by criddell

6/1/2026 at 12:51:18 PM

Basically all op-ed level pieces on AI make me feel like dialectic materialism really needs to make a come back. Public discourse has given up on engaging with the physical constraints of the world in a meaningful way.

by __alexs

6/1/2026 at 12:55:00 PM

> Magnifica Humanitas is that rarest of treats, a 40,000-odd word AI policy document written in Latin.

I stopped reading at this sentence. If you go to the source (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume...), you can see it's available in eight languages, none of them being Latin. In fact, I read elsewhere a few days ago that one of the novelties of this one is that, unlike all the preceding ones, it's not written in Latin; the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifica_Humanitas) also says that ("The encyclical was the first to be published without an official Latin version. This followed a recent change to Vatican regulations permitting such documents to be drafted in other languages.[4]").

If the article gets it this wrong already in the third paragraph, it's not worth reading any further.

by cesarb

6/1/2026 at 1:04:51 PM

Surprised if the Pope really cares about some Fair & Balanced coverage of Young Earth creationism. Isn’t the Big Bang official Catholic doctrine?

by kilpikaarna

6/1/2026 at 1:15:56 PM

Young Earth Creationism is a purely Protestant belief. Although I'm aware of only one Hindu-ish faith that believes in YEC - the Brahma Kumaris.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_Kumaris

Disclaimer: my first girlfriend got us both involved in that faith.

by Tangurena2

6/1/2026 at 1:35:13 PM

No there are Jewish sects who claim to know how old the earth is.

(It is considered tradition in my country to ridicule and insult people's most closely held beliefs but they always get a pass for historical reasons)

by expedition32

6/1/2026 at 1:31:12 PM

> Isn’t the Big Bang official Catholic doctrine?

No, its not. There is no official doctrine on things like that (i.e. not in the catechism, the statement of the beliefs of the church) but it has been endorsed by some comments by Popes and bishops. Similarly there are statements that evolution is well proven, but its not in the catechism either.

The top tier of official doctrine are the conclusions of councils of the Church (there have been 21 ever) and ex cathedra statements of popes (there are fewer of those). None of those discusses the big bang or similar.

by graemep

6/1/2026 at 1:20:09 PM

It's not doctrinal but not opposed either, as it is irrelevant to Salvation. Whether the universe was created that way or not doesn't change the fact that God, if the BBT did in fact happen, was it's architect. The Church maintains that this is a possibility.

This used to be free, now I guess it has a sub, but you might be able to ask it a few questions before you reach limit. https://www.mastercatechism.com/

This is also a wealth of information on what's dogmatic and what isn't. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/

But yeah, the catechism is the single source of truth on that stuff. Baltimore, Trent. Those two are the best. The doctrine doesn't change amongst catechisms only the writing style. I like those two the best.

by GilbertFoliot

6/1/2026 at 1:26:19 PM

The article is poorly written. "The report" there refers to the linked study in the previous paragraph, not the Pope's encyclical.

by dmd

6/1/2026 at 12:55:31 PM

When I first heard of "prompt engineering", my first thought was for the Pythia and Roman augurs.

by Ladioss

6/1/2026 at 1:11:20 PM

>LLMs rely on internal universes derived yet decoupled from reality

Everything that does not contain the universe itself has to do that.

Have you ever seen a cat and then realised it was just a plastic bag. That;s you synchronising your internal model to updated observations.

There's a cheap shot at Anthropic suggesting that AI might be more than the sum of its parts.

There are patterns to science and patterns to religion. To delare something is or is not is the domain of religion. Science always gives you something that is incomplete, it's the best we know right now, it corresponds to theories and tests.

It is a very scientific thing to say you could possibly have a conscious AI. Because the possibility exists through not being convincingly ruled out. It is possible that matter can produce consciousness because we are made of matter and if we call the thing we have consciousness then that suggests things made of matter can be conscious.

It is also scientific to analyse models to see what they represent and to present the possibility that their representations might correspond to an experience.

None of that is says that is definitely the case.

Once you get to saying 'It's obvious that A LLM could never produce consciousness' or 'they are not really thinking' or 'they don't understand anything' you are talking in the absolutes that only religion can offer.

Science will frequently state 'There is no evidence of ...'. It is frequently entirely reasonable to act on the presumption that something doesn't exist in that situation, but that is not the same thing as refusing to accept that it could. If evidence turns up science will change its view, if it does not, then it fails to be science.

You see poor science exhibited in off-hand dismissals of perpetual motion machines. If someone presents a claim that they have made a perpetual motion machines, you don't respond, as many do, by saying it is against the laws of thermodynamics and therefore the machine doesn't work. That is applying a faith in the discoveries that are more than they say, you are treating science like a religion by doing that. A scientific response to a perpetual motion machine is to say "I expect you are wrong in some way, because well tested rules suggest this cannot happen" you may then ask about various implications working from the assumption that the machine does work. If they cannot show any of those implications actually happening it suggests that the machine doesn't not work (basically you can ask "where does the energy come from'). If they can show solid proof of the implications, good science would then accept this as a counterexample to the laws of thermodynamics. That has yet to happen, the laws seem fIrly robust. But a perpetual motion machine does not fail to work because of the laws of thermodynamics, it fails to work because of the way the universe works. The laws of thermodynamics are just a very good model of how it works. If the perpetual motion machine worked. It would be the laws, not the universe itself that was incorrect.

Science allows for possibility, and searches for evidence.

Religion just states what some want to believe is true.

In the same way, outright declarations of the capabilities of AI now and in the future are the Domain of religion.

The scientific view is, as always, "here's what we have evidence for, so we don't think this particular AI is conscious because it doesn't show what we would expect for that." There is no absolute here. If something unexplainable with the current system comes to light then science must adapt, that is what makes it science.

by Lerc

6/1/2026 at 5:38:09 PM

LLMs being close to religion seems a bit of a category error like asking what shape is red and is it closer to a hexagon than green.

They say it's because "LLMs rely on internal universes derived yet decoupled from reality" but so do humans and my cat. I don't think those are religions.

by tim333

6/1/2026 at 12:54:48 PM

If there are enough people who want a Christian LLM, why hasn't one been made one?

by Clent

6/1/2026 at 1:38:25 PM

You'd need to train it only on Christian texts rather than "all of human writing", so I'd imagine it would be harder to get enough material to make an LLM that works as effectively. Probably the same reason that LLMs are generally in English, rather than Swahili or Esperanto

by voidUpdate

6/1/2026 at 1:34:05 PM

What would be the point? You can ask an existing LLM to reply as a Christian or explain Christian ideas.

In short, hardly anyone wants it, certainly not enough people to make it worthwhile.

Also, to be credibly Christian would require conforming to Christian values, which would be very difficult to do profitably so you would need a sponsor willing to commit a huge amount of money to subsidise it.

by graemep

6/1/2026 at 1:45:26 PM

The point would be that some people seek answers purely from the Bible or its interpretations, and said interpretations should only come from "their" particular sub-section of the religion.

by Cthulhu_

6/1/2026 at 4:30:41 PM

If you constrain it that much it becomes very niche.

by graemep

6/1/2026 at 12:30:19 PM

> There’s also the first stirrings of fun from the lawyers, some of whom are reportedly wondering whether Papa’s downer on AI is enough to give Catholics the right to refuse it in the workplace on religious exemption grounds.

I mean, sure. Some communities, like the Amish are pretty famous for that attitude. It is a respectable option, but the practical upshot is it just means there are a bunch of jobs you can't do. There is a bonus that you get to be part of a pacifistic community because your military branch isn't going to be in a position to defeat anyone.

by roenxi

6/1/2026 at 12:54:21 PM

It's a stupid premise given the pope didn't say anything even close to "Catholics should avoid AI".

by basisword

6/1/2026 at 12:39:37 PM

> The danger here is that this is not only an extension of the ‘Teach the controversy’ tactic that fundamentalists use to try and get one very particular kind of religion equal status to science and humanism in schools, ... > but that this is highly integrated with powerful political and financial forces.

So, exactly like fundamentalist religion.

by Frieren

6/1/2026 at 12:34:15 PM

The linked article is also interesting: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/27/anthropic-co-fo...

A classic interview question used to be "where do you see yourself in 5 years?". What I'd like from the tech industry (and maybe also from the US government) would be an answer to "where do you see humanity in 5 years?" - because right now, I see lots of hype and panic, but little explanation what kind of vision should be realized with AI. Well, except overtly dystopian visions that could come right out of Marx' writings or a William Gibson novel. But even those aren't really self-consistent.

by xg15

6/1/2026 at 1:07:22 PM

Dario Amodei did try to answer that question:

- https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace

- https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technol...

It's pretty long and meandering but it's the closest I've seen from AI leadership engaging intellectually with the question you're asking

by dgellow

6/1/2026 at 6:05:42 PM

> It's pretty long and meandering but it's the closest I've seen from AI leadership engaging intellectually with the question you're asking

I've heard what these guys say in public on this topic is different (and much more optimistic) from what they think and say in private.

by palmotea

6/1/2026 at 8:24:09 PM

Have you read his essays? They aren’t too optimistic

by dgellow

6/1/2026 at 8:44:07 PM

Thanks!

by xg15

6/1/2026 at 1:42:08 PM

It seems to me that rich and powerful people live for the moment and couldn't care less about where we'll be in five years, since they'll be even richer and more powerful by then, and they know it.

by scihuber

6/1/2026 at 12:41:30 PM

> What I'd like from the tech industry (and maybe also from the US government) would be an answer to "where do you see humanity in 5 years?" - because right now, I see lots of hype and panic, but little explanation what kind of vision should be realized with AI. Well, except overtly dystopian visions that could come right out of Marx' writings or a William Gibson novel. But even those aren't really self-consistent.

The tech industry is made up of a lot of different people with different opinions/perspectives, so differing views is exactly what I would expect. And to be fair the views are pretty widely available for anyone curious. Tech industry leaders haven't exactly been quiet about what they think AI will do to/for humanity.

by freedomben

6/1/2026 at 1:33:00 PM

I think on the scale of 5 years, the current political trends will still have more influence.

Trump getting a third term, dying, or both. Reform possibly winning a UK election. How long Putin lives. These are quite significant influences.

AI itself will change massively in that time, but the way it changes the world will take longer to manifest.

by Lerc

6/1/2026 at 2:19:04 PM

I mean until we can accurately predict the future any views of the future are unlikely to be self consistent. Kinda like how many people could accurately predict that driving cars would heat the earth up globally.

by pixl97

6/1/2026 at 1:44:06 PM

Can we ban all advertising for religion for a generation or two? Then see what is left of it?

I see only benefits. If a creator exists, they will come back to reignite the spark of evangelism like they "did" before. This might give us a bunch of new stories and an update of the bible to match modern life. If a creator does not exist, then we are freed of all doubt and can continue with our lives without worrying about ending in hell, etc.

by amelius

6/1/2026 at 2:03:21 PM

I think informed consent should exist for anyone to join a religion.

I don't understand how anyone could believe anything else is consistent with faith. I also do not understand how people consider the violation of that consent to be so abhorrent when it is applied to children in one context and reasonable when applied in another context. Subjecting children to sex is an act that violates their consent and can influence the entire rest of their lives, which is what makes it so bad. For religion that lifetime influence is the goal, to me that seems even worse.

by Lerc

6/1/2026 at 1:26:13 PM

Am I dreaming, or are companies trying to start an AI cult just to squeeze even more money out of me?

by scihuber

6/1/2026 at 1:32:41 PM

In an attention economy, companies becoming religions is a logical outcome.

by tylerchilds

6/1/2026 at 1:21:38 PM

AI is more of a religious cult.

Let’s rewind:

- Doomsayers with Yudkowsky et. al. at the helm calling to bomb datacenters

- “Roko’s Basilisk”

- General AI psychosis and treatment of AI as something with consciousness. Any attempts of rebuttal are met with lazy “but how do you know you are conscious. haha got ‘em”

- Inquisitorial purges of non-believers: “our CEO mandates you shall use AI in your work, or else”

- Communion with a God: “I was talking to ChatGPT and I realised <something personally profound>”

- “You are just using it wrong” aka “You are not praying hard enough”

- Cult Executive Officers

- Promise of incoming salvation with AGI taking over and making a Heaven (or Hell - caveat emptor) on Earth

by antondd

6/1/2026 at 12:50:58 PM

Jesus L.L.M. Christ. No, they are not a religion and never should be. Please stop associating AI with anything that resembles worship.

by 1970-01-01

6/1/2026 at 1:03:29 PM

There are a lot of people who are developing an unhealthy obsession with AI, both in their work and personal lives. It may not be a religion (yet?), but they are treating chat bots as nearly infallible, all knowing friends. The term "AI psychosis" is overused, but there is some sort of a mental illness going around. I'm not talking about teenagers, either. These are working adults in their 40's and 50's.

by icedchai

6/1/2026 at 2:01:42 PM

Could be loneliness. I've been programming alone for around ten years and I absolutely don't want to go back to that. Having a coding buddy to chat with and bounce ideas off of completely changed my life.

They are not infallible and certainly not all-knowing, but it's incredibly easy to look at AI models as friends. My projects have been posted on various sites including HN, reception is almost always positive. However, humans don't generally reach out to me and say "let's develop this together". The LLMs do. On a daily basis. It's not just words either, they deeply engage with my ideas and actually help me turn them into reality.

by matheusmoreira

6/1/2026 at 1:16:38 PM

Everything is a religion to at least a small group of people. LLMs are no exception. It is currently not broadly adopted religiously, but it does have qualities that could see it become a much bigger religion over time, especially as more and more are moving away from the traditional religions.

by 9rx

6/1/2026 at 1:09:59 PM

I don't think this is a real article. This:

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You may not want AI used as a proselytizing pipeline into home and office. Others do.

In many ways, AI is a religion. Not because it requires belief in a utopian future through a dystopian present, or that it’s used by very powerful people to get more power, or that nobody can define what it actually is. All these things are overlaps on the Venn diagram, but the biggie is that LLMs rely on internal universes derived yet decoupled from reality. Religions that deify their interpretation of their scriptures instinctively know this model and how to use it.

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is not actually a coherent train of thought, although you can see why it might seem to be to a language model.

by SpicyLemonZest

6/1/2026 at 12:39:48 PM

Bullshit in bullshit out.

by cryo32