There’s a Basilisk in the Bathwater: AI and the Apocalyptic Imagination-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

There’s a Basilisk in the Bathwater: AI and the Apocalyptic Imagination

Published:2024-04-30 Issue:5 Volume:15 Page:560
ISSN:2077-1444
Container-title:Religions
language:en
Short-container-title:Religions

Author:

Isbrücker Avery¹²

Affiliation:

1. Queen’s School of Religions, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada

2. Department of English, Concordia University, Montréal, QC H3G IMB, Canada

Abstract

Deciding what to make of secular, religious, and spiritual speculations about AI and digital technologies can be overwhelming, and focusing on the extreme utopic or dystopic outcomes may be obscuring the larger facts. Is this technology a beautiful blessing or a damning curse? What can paying close attention to these technologies and the discourse surrounding them show? How founded are our anxieties? By following the apocalyptic throughline in this rhetoric across fields in recent years, this essay seeks to consider the effect of apocalyptic thought on recent developments in tech, and consider how this worldview orients our future. The deterministically utopic, dystopic, and apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding these technologies obscures their function and efficacy, giving agency to what is functionally still just a tool, the use for which depends on its designers and users.

Publisher

MDPI AG

Link

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/5/560/pdf

Reference45 articles.

1. Adarlo, Sharon (2024, March 29). Video Shows First Neuralink Patient Playing Mario Kart With His Mind. Available online: https://futurism.com/neoscope/neuralink-patient-mario-kart.

2. New Age Spirituality, Quantum Mysticism and Self-Psychology: Changing Ourselves from the inside Out;Amarasingam;Mental Health, Religion & Culture,2009

3. Anderson, Janna, and Rainie, Lee (2024, March 01). As AI Spreads, Experts Predict the Best and Worst Changes in Digital Life by 2035. Available online: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/06/21/as-ai-spreads-experts-predict-the-best-and-worst-changes-in-digital-life-by-2035/.

4. Blankholm, Joseph (2022). The Secular Paradox: On the Religiousity of the Not Religious, New York University Press. Secular Studies.

5. Bostrom, Nick (2014). Superintelligence: Paths Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press. [1st ed.].