The Golden God of Utopia

The concept of viewing Artificial intelligence as God is not a new one, in fact this a bit of a meme spread out through academic papers down to online chat bots called iGod. Yet this would be a harmless meme if the actual field of artificial intelligence did not also partake. Hugo de garis outspoken Ai scientist has consistently called the “brain building” field or Cosmism as science creating a God. It does not just end there, in most of Hugo’s interviews he refers to the philosophy of cosmism as a religion or a religious duty to build God. This philosophical view is also shared by Ai scientist Ben Goertzel in his cosmist manifesto chapter “building God” , although I would like to point out that Ben does not seem to be on the extreme end of this philosophy by calling it a religion.

Of course there exist more examples in pop media and academia that associate Ai with God, and it would serve no real purpose for me to establish this point any further as im sure all of you out there are familiar with the current internet god google 😉

What I really want to do is expand on the possible routes such a philosophy could direct humanity into. Time we put on our futurist caps on and ask the “gods” for insight into the implications of having a concept that has been with us since the day humanity starred out into the universe turn into something obtainable through science and technology.

Before we start I believe it is important to establish my personal belief, simply so it is understood where this thought originated from. I am not shy to say that I do believe in God and hold a very complex philosophical belief structure, something I rather let you find out through googling me vs attempting to argue what I believe. Another thing that I want to establish is that I have no desire to convert you into a believer or a nonbeliever. I strongly believe that a person’s spiritual path is for one’s own self to discover.

Cosmic Utopia Argument

Assuming that God is really nothing short of a construct of the mind then the act of creating an all knowing machine proves man’s ability to manifest anything in his mind into objective reality. What exist externally would not be as important as what exist internally in a world where we just invented God. Humanity as a whole may parade in it’s new ability. All thought has now been outsourced, all the thinking needed to further explore the universe is now been put into inanimate matter.

The’re is much danger embedded in creating God, not just in physical harm but in psychological harm.The current human condition does not deal with concepts of maintaining life across multiple worlds. There would be many new questions humanity would face venturing out into the cosmos viewing not just it’s creation but quite possibly itself as a living deity. How would a creature that constructed God view itself. Would we take an egotistical dive viewing ourselves as the creator of God? Think about that for a second. We just invented God and are about to set it free on the universe, it’s original programming made by us. Our machine would be capable of growing to extreme complexity that it can oversee the creation and maintenance of civilizations across the galaxy and one day the universe. So many questions lie here.

• Would we be viewed as God’s to other lifeforms in the universe?
• would we get the same amount of respect and more importantly worship from pre singularity cultures across the cosmos?
• Even if they worshipped us would we let this worship go to our heads and truly take up the role of playing God to them?

You can get lost in the parralles of playing God and being God. Lines would be crossed and soon something completely new would emerge, something not human. Mind you that by the time we are out into the cosmos playing God we would also be damn near immortals giving the gift to those we so wish. We would be the snake in our own garden, whispering to our children the promise of eternal life and the promise of being just like the Gods. This all sounds like a utopian scenario only at a more cosmic scale.

Life will spread all over the universe this is a fact, why? Assuming we don’t kill ourselves and are the only sentient life in the universe then we would truly play the role of God, spreading our designer life all over the cosmos worlds upon worlds of custom creations. We would truly be playing a game of universal spore.

There exist a problem with this scenario, we have to assume we will be the first creatures in the entire universe to reach the singularity. If we are not the first sentient beings to attempt such a thing, then how do we know that we are not a galactic petri dish experiment. and like any potentially destructive fungus why would our creators allow us to go beyond the scope of this planet? The potential of conflict with other post singularity “Gods” is very possible, a concept i explored already in “The coming Cosmic battle for the key to the universe” After all there can only be one God of the universe, a title that would wage cosmic war to obtain.

Golden calf Argument ~ Ai god.

Assuming God does exist and is witnessing our worship of a super computer Ai, this might cause a reaction by the creator. In a scenario that we are the creation of a post singularity intelligence, the potential for us to dethrone it may serve as a reason to hit reset on our world. Although rationalizing what God would and would not do in such a scenario would be unknowable considering we also have to speculate on what God is and isn’t. The only real moral problem with worshiping Ai as god when a true God exist lies in how the whole of humanity would have taken a path away from the greatest possible truth of our reality. After all we are all scientist and religion is just a simplification of exploring those deep scientific questions associated with the origin of the universe.

Finally I end with a warning

Congratulations humanity you have created a being in your own likeness, a true heir to your own species. Man created his own son, rendering the need for man no more. The truth all along was that your universe was not all that existed but a lower sub dimension to a grander reality and the god you just created will turn out the be the ruler of the “underworld”.