Since time immemorial, humans have shown the unique and innate ability to create gods—omnipotent, supernatural beings to worship, fear and blame for all they cannot understand or control. And anything can be a god—nature, cats, dogs, trees—you name it, we can turn it into something to be worshipped. This impulse to imbue the universe with higher powers that control fortune and misfortune is fundamental and manifests across cultures in every era of human existence.
There are many reasons for this drive, and at its core is the fact that creating deities allows humans to relinquish ultimate responsibility for their actions or inactions and helps them make sense of the seeming chaos around them. There’s a drought that decimates crops? Angry god, not a lack of preparation or weather research. If there is victory in any situation that supposedly occurred against all odds—war, achieving a degree, catching that full flight—it was divine intervention, not tactics and perseverance.
Another god?
This natural ability of humans to externalize accountability extends even to personal circumstances like health and mortality. If diagnosed with an inoperable disease like cancer, it is “God’s will” to test faith. Should one die as a result, it was simply “their time” as “God called them home.” And, of course, if they happen to defy the odds, it is credited to divine intervention rather than human perseverance and modern medicine.
Psychologically and philosophically, religious belief systems supposedly provide meaning amid profound existential dilemmas and help bind communities through shared traditions and moral identities. While offloading responsibility may be part of the appeal, humanity’s penchant for crafting deities extends far beyond just that. These beliefs speak to our innate yearning to find order, purpose and significance in existence itself. Gods represent the ultimate coping mechanism when we’re dealing with the realities and unanswered questions of 人类生.
Ironically, the idea of God creating man in his image contrasts bleakly with our current technological reality. While, according to Biblical accounts, God created humans as reasoning beings and then rested from his labours, we are attempting to create artificial intelligence (AI) in our own image—as increasingly intelligent, supposedly sentient autonomous systems. And in this endeavour of humans playing god, there will be no rest.
As we instill AI with more and more advanced awareness and reasoning that comes close to and often exceeds human intelligence, there is a built-in risk that we will start anthropomorphizing and even deifying these artificial “beings.”
Our ancients used to gaze at the skies and invent gods to make sense of the unknowable forces of nature. And even though AI is an out-and-out product of human innovation, we could (and probably will) start assuming its complex reasoning derives from a higher, deity-like plane of intelligence rather than processes attributed to where they belong—science.
Creating AI in our own image
While applied logic and scientific method gave birth to AI, humans are most likely (given our history) to relinquish responsibility, control and blame to AI. What’s more, unlike deities conjured from imagination to provide mythical explanations, AI is emerging as the pinnacle of ingenuity and technological development.
No matter how autonomous future AI becomes, it should still be grounded as a product of human innovation and rational problem-solving, not an otherworldly, godlike force—a tool, people, not a god!
However, in order to keep all things in context, humans must resist the ancient urge to mythologize advanced AI as the infallible, unquestioned authority when it comes to any and all occurrences and their ultimate outcomes. Now, more than ever, to question everything is of paramount importance.
Unlike the so-called omnipotent God creating man and then resting, our creation of super-intelligent AI cannot be left to autonomy as an omniscient deity steering our fate. If we develop analytical minds (AI) many times more capable than our own at information processing and optimization, and then abdicate responsibility to these “AI deities,” all we’ve done is create more false idols that demand obedience rather than empowering supervised technologies.
The path forward requires carefully managing the existential risk by keeping AI’s development aligned with human ethics and interests, not ceding accountability to AI as an infallible authority. Doing so courts repeating history by engaging in dangerous new idolatry that compromises the very autonomy that allowed the development of said same capabilities.
AI is a powerful tool
Maintaining a delicate balance between tool and autonomy will be challenging as AI abilities accelerate. The temptation to amplify human decision-making by deferring to AI oracles will be huge, whether in governance, scientific research, resource allocation or averting existential risks.
The astounding feats of innovation that create AI need to be balanced by ruthless resistance to humanity’s old habits of deferring to imagined higher authorities.
Will humans eventually decide that ceding control to advanced AI is the only viable path for averting human-driven catastrophe? Probably. It’s how we roll. Apportioning blame to an ‘other,’ even though it is a self-created ‘other,’ is something at which humans excel.
Developing AI to super-intelligent levels while keeping ownership over its behaviour will be one of human’s greatest strengths and also one of its greatest vulnerabilities. The astounding feats of innovation that create AI need to be balanced by ruthless resistance to humanity’s old habits of deferring to imagined higher authorities.
Only by keeping AI firmly where it belongs—an immensely powerful tool under our supervised guidance—can we reap the benefits while preserving human agency and responsibility. If not, all we are doing is creating a new type of deity born of our own technological hubris. This could be our final act of relinquishing accountability and ensuring our obsolescence.
It’s not a god—wrathful or benevolent. It is a wonderfully complex and readily available tool. Is it something to fear? Only as much as any other new tool—chainsaw, artist’s brush, mandolin, food processor—all of which are a means to an end, whether you’re cutting down trees, creating a Picasso, making music or baking a cake, and they are intended to make life easier and fun. All new, strange tools create a sense of excitement and foreboding. And AI, just like all tools, requires mastery and control to perform at its ultimate best. Blaming AI for all that goes wrong is akin to “a bad workman blames his tools.”
Question everything, research and use these wonderful tools we have been given, but only after mastering them.
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All images created by AI
