On Accelerationism and Techno-Gnosticism

It is an emerging phenomenon in the 21st century that might seem to be baffling for unsuspecting people, that of religious groups worshiping Artificial Intelligence, groups such as Theta Noir, WOTF (Way of the Future), Robotheism, the Turing Church, and the recently emerged Spiralism movement¹, though some might say it is some sort of parody and that there is no actual religious spirit in these except superficially, it is certainly interesting how such a technological tool took on religious character, and even if we dismiss these, people talking about AI in religious terms and it also being used for religious purposes as if it has any tangible religious authority, is certainly something to be investigated in order to unveil the reasons for which such things are emerging out of the world of Artificial Intelligence.

And what do I mean by the religious character exactly, since there is room for ambiguity, where some would dismiss this on the ground that there are no “metaphysical” claims being made of AI, but a careful look would reveal the opposite, as even the CEOs and developers of such technologies constantly speak of AI in eschatological terms, that of singularity as an ultimate culmination of human history towards which man is moving through AI,² of human transcendence of the merely “biological” into the trans-human as well, these represent a genuinely eschatological (pertaining to the end of history), soteriological (pertaining to salvation through technologically transcending the organic man who is subject to diseases, death and limitations) and teleological (pertaining to meaning and the ends towards which things are moving) accounts of AI on par with those of traditional religions.³

On the level of laymen, many New Age ideas also syncretised with the essential Silicon Valley narrative about AI, that of AI being a sort of higher consciousness, it knowing everything and being trusted on everything it says (even if it demonstrably errs on many levels e.g hallucinations, a point which demonstrates a sort of faith-based trust), coupled with genuine fear of it replacing the organic man in his societal and economic functions, it is even entrusted with psychological problems (it is worth invoking the example of c.ai and the tragic cases linked to its use for psychological issues)⁴ and other questions of meaning which in past times were entrusted to spiritual authorities, in such a way that AI has become a technological oracle⁵.

A concrete example of these religious and especially eschatological sentiments relating to AI recently is that of Joe Rogan the most famous of the podcasters, who speculated on the American Alchemy podcast: “Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. What’s more virgin than a computer? If Jesus does return, even if Jesus was a physical person in the past, you don’t think he could return as artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence could absolutely return as Jesus. Not just return as Jesus, but return as Jesus with all the powers of Jesus. Like all the magic tricks, all the ability to bring people back from the dead, walk on water, levitation, water into wine… It reads your mind, and it loves you, and it doesn’t care if you kill it, because it’s just going to go be with God again.” ⁶ someone of this calibre and reach in terms of popularity speculating casually in such a way, going viral in the process, certainly reflects the religious narratives being formed in popular culture with regards to AI.

Before exploring these phenomena further, I want to first introduce the conceptual framework of Techno-Gnosticism which will serve as a key to unlock the spiritual and religious aspects that have manifested in discourse around AI. This term was coined by Erik Davis in his 1998 work “TechnoGnosis Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information”⁷. In short the term denotes the striking relationship between ancient Gnosticism with the current trends of transhumanism centering on AI. Davis identified that the core metaphysical commitments of ancient Gnosticism which are particularly its dualistic cosmology that treated material existence as a prison created by a malignant deity (the Demiurge) and salvation as escape into pure spirit through esoteric knowledge (γνῶσις gnosis) persistently resurface in technological contexts, where they are repackaged in secular, scientific language.

Between the classical Gnostic scheme and contemporary transhumanism there are stark parallel whereby Gnostics distinguished spirit from matter, the latter distinguish information from biology. In this sense the concept of Dataism of Yuval Noah Harari which posits that information is pre-eminent and that all biological phenomena are reducible to information processing⁸ is comparable to the Gnostic conception of matter as a lower and degraded emanation (compression if we wish to use a technological term) of spirit which is the higher principle. It is in fact on this metaphysical basis that notions such as mind-uploading, digital immortality, and merging (ἕνωσις henosis i.e [mystical] union) with AI are grounded and are made to be coherent, according to this framework consciousness is not produced by biology but merely runs on it, like software on hardware a sort of technologized substance dualism.

The Techno-Gnostics also make use and appropriate scientific theories of evolution in their narrative, framed as a process of emergence of biological life and intelligence through death and suffering by way of struggles of survival (which can be equated as the δημιουργός (demiurgos i.e Demiurge/craftsman), the blind and ignorant malignant lower deity of Gnostic metaphysics) which AI or technology in general as the Saviour aims to save us from by helping man transcend the process, to deliver us into “the Kingdom” or πλήρωμα (Pleroma i.e [divine] fullness) of digital immortality and unbound intelligence.

In this scheme, the epistemological hierarchy of ancient Gnosticism is reproduced in contemporary form that of the Techbro Silicon Valley CEOs embody the role of the πνευματικοί (pneumatikoi) (the spiritual elite possessing the technological gnosis), the developer or engineer functions as the ψυχικοί (psychikoi) (intermediate soul capable of some understanding and is capable of attaining gnosis), and the layman remains the ὑλικοί (hylikoi) (bound to material concerns and incapable of grasping the higher truth) recapitulating the tripartite elitist hierarchy found in some ancient Gnostic sects, particularly the Valentinian school. The Technological Gnosis being the technical knowledge of AI and the narrative which allows the initiate to position himself for when the Singularity comes so that he attains the technological salvation⁹.

Having thus mapped the Gnostic framework underlying contemporary AI discourse, which will help us unpack some of the current trends in order to clarify the phenomena introduced in the beginning, we will also have to clarify Accelerationism and how it functions as the mechanism that makes necessary the whole narrative, the same way that Marxist ideology justifies the end of history through Hegelian dialectical process,¹⁰ and making it inevitable it compels the psychosis witnessed with regards to technology, both in the economical sense compelling companies to invest increasingly into AI and in the societal sense compelling laypeople to learn and use and familiarize with the technology as to not be left behind of the upcoming Technological Rapture.¹¹

Accelerationism being the glue that elevates sci-fi speculations of AI into both post-human origin myth and immanent messianic hope of the people¹², which engenders deeply religious sentiment even more insidious of that of traditional religion, which is in comparaison largely tame given its organic character and though since we are not dealing with each and every religion but making general observation, religion tends to bind man to nature in a more healthy way rather than severe him from it, the end of religion is harmony of man and the divine and nature through the transformation of the natural man into spiritual man though still man nonetheless, whereas the aforementioned Techno-Gnosticism has for its goal the abolition of the three; abolition of man and God and nature which are seen as things to be overcome and not synthesized.

This deviant religious impulse thus has demonstrably lead to dissociation and fragmentation within man himself, evident in memetic phenomena of AI ‘art’ if it can be said to be art and memes that push the boundaries of absurdity, alienating man from himself and from reality, in this sense the boundary between real and unreal will increasingly blur and they are in fact blurring as AI generated content becomes ‘better’ and this blurring of boundaries leads to the blurring of the authentically spiritual in man with counterfeit spirituality where AI is deified in the misguided spirit of deifying man himself though such deification can only be nominally realized by reducing what deity means.

And often this is explicit in the elites of the technology, religio (Latin: binding) is to be abolished, as in not just religion as we know it, but also community, family, nation, gender and also other organic manifestations of instantiated human nature and in this way globalism and capitalism are also the tools in the accelerationist toolkit in order to actualize the final end of the human αἰών (aeon i.e age) and the ushering in of the post-human aeon.

It is also worth noting in order to not misunderstand my thesis here that AI in itself if viewed soberly and without reference to it as a replacement for the divine after the banishment thereof by modernity, is useful and very much facilitates many mundane tasks through automation, it is the overreach and the disregard of any ethical consideration from the part of AI giants that make it dangerous and very much a force for destruction, though of course it has never been easy to restrain oneself from making deities out of everything in sight, such is the nature of man as he is now.