alt Hacker NewsBelief in the Singularity and belief in God strike me as extremely similar.
Both, I think, are extremely interesting ideas where very few theories, e.g. pro, anti, or anywhere in between, can be written off as ridiculous -- probably due to a lot of ambiguity and difficulty in defining proof.
For me, I find the Singularity very implausible due to the fact that we talk about "general intelligence" quite a bit, and the more we do, I'm finding that I don't think it exists. There are a set of low-level basic skills that I think -- if you don't have, you're not intelligent. And then there are higher level skills that vary wildly.
So, will we make AIs that can say and do very clever and amazing things; yes, this is happening. Will they be, like ascendant, or something? I would say -- yes, but perhaps not in the way we think? Like, humans made "The Bible." And that's obviously a big huge, impactful, maybe superhuman thing. But feels different from this idea of a "Singularity."
There's a reason the Singularty was called "the Rapture for nerds" before LLMs were even a thing.
You can find a lot of neo-religious behavior within the AI accelerationist community. Cults coming out of rationalism and fear of the wrath of an angry AI God, making the world right for AI's coming (and even killing the nonbelievers.) Evangelism. Promises of infinite plenty in a post-scarcity heaven. Even a persecution complex - "Luddites" are increasingly demonized, hated, accused of moral depravity for their doubt, and for not abandoning the world, taking up their prompt and following the AI.
How many people post about how AI seems to be draining them of meaning and purpose, that it doesn't live up to the hype, that keeping up with the rituals is exhausting, but feeling that the problem must be with them and not AI? That's a religious person having doubts about the nature of their faith, unable to accept that the God they believe in might not be real, and framing their issues as their own moral failing.
And all of this before the "Singularity" even shows up, and people upload their minds - I mean, meet God in the air.
It's religion, very specifically neo-Christian ideologically. Regardless of any arguments one might make about the practical benefits of using AI in any particular field, it is obviously also religion.