Episode 11.13: Why the history of religions is relevant to the emergence of AGI.

Human beings have been fascinated by gods and their God for most of their history. We like to think that someone is in control, that someone knows what is going on, that someone understands everything, and that we are part of some great cosmic plan. We like in particular to feel that someone is watching our back, that there is someone watching over us. It’s almost certainly not true, any of it, but we cling ambivalently to the notion anyway. If, as I believe, nobody knows what is going on most of the time, this is one reason why we like to hold onto belief in a deity, for deities are those who do. Now it is possible that something like an artificial general intelligence will watch over us all the time and know what is going on all the time. Now there may at last be a God.