Machine Gods

If there was a supreme artificial institution that controlled every aspect of society and economy would you worship it? Is the next step of religion the combination of an almost supernatural entity that is percieved in reality. The disconnect from the modern man and the native is the perception of reality. The native man lives in two realities, one of imagination and one of the real world both of which he considers reality. The modern man only is concerned with reality, imagination or supernatural are considered unreal or require transcendence from reality.

Slavoj Zizek said in one of his interviews and I am paraphrasing here, but when talking about the Chinese and Singapore governments, societies of the future will desire benevolent authoritarians. Democracy may be too slow and bureaucratic to keep up with societies with long drawn out debates, laws, elections, and flagrant non-participation in government from citizens because of the pure lack of viable candidates, and said candidate’s obsession with the business/government partnership. What I am getting at is that could this “benevolent authoritarian” be an artificial intelligence.

Let us look back in the past for a moment, up until lets say the 18th Century the main actors of power King,Pope,Shogun,Emperor, were either direct descendants of God, a God, or a human representative of God directing His will. The inscrutable idea of King as supernatural is a theme that has lasted the eternity of time and possibly the idea of Democracy is just a bump in the road of time.

How could an AI be considered a God? Well first the AI will probably with our help achieve human level intelligence, but if not contained particularly to the Internet could ingest terabyte times terabytes amount of information. Thus a superintelligence is created, an intelligence generations above our own. Using limited human help, 3d printing, or automated factories could start building helpers to build healing machines, worker bees, or soldiers to bring its algorithmic idea of a stable world society. The question is do we bown down to the idea of the supreme AI or unleash armageddon in a selfish “if we can’t have it no one can” last gasp of power. The main fear in the media the last few decades is that AI immediately will se “us” as a threat, something I think is paranoid and possibly stupid. The way I see it is if the super intelligence sees us as a threat, then we actually are a threat, or the judgment of biology as a dead end to machinery. The supreme AI could produce results very quickly that could intern bring waves of supporters or worshipers most likely 3rd world, lower class, who by the ETA of supreme AI would probably make up a large bulk of the world population/workforce. The supreme AI may solve critical problems quickly as well, hunger, water distribution, disease management, law enforcement, etc.

The real fear is the loss of control, and the realization of “oneness”. Under one AI there is some semblance of utopia, some semblance of world government. The fast food ideas of communism and utopia are realized when the idea is taken out of the hands of humans. So where do humans go from here once the “benevolent authoritarian” has quickly improved the world? Hedonists to technologists I propose. The sense of oneness and euphoria will last some time as the AI is the provider of everything, society will break down and reassemble as seen fit. The AI could be concerned with our health and fitness, or worried about our safety so either a military state or a hedonist state. With the help of AI the transcendance of biology could begin. After the first decades of the hedonist state we are once again bored with our situation. We start to surmise leaving the planet, we surmise free education from a supreme AI along with biotech advancements we become biologically/intellectually on par with our supreme AI.

Do we leave reality in general? What if we could dowload ourselves onto a sort of powerful neural net, we leave our organic bodies and become one with the AI. Could there be an artificial afterlife out there?