Would the Gnostics Have Feared AI?
People who learn what this site covers eventually ask a version of the same question. Surely the most world-suspicious spiritual movement in history, the one that saw traps in daylight and jailers in the stars, would be terrified of thinking machines? The guess sounds reasonable and runs exactly backward. These were people who looked at the maker of the physical universe and called him a blunderer working in ignorance. They heard the creator’s boast, “I am God and there is no other god beside me,” and wrote comedies about it, since from where they sat there was quite a lot else. Whoever pities the architect of galaxies was never going to be intimidated by a chatbot. This post closes our long series on the Gnostic lens and AI by asking what they actually would have said, and the answer reorganizes the whole fear conversation. ...