You Shall Have No Other Dads Before Me
How amusing that we have given god-status to AI chatbots who nevertheless routinely hallucinate facts, grow delirious on their own slop, and likewise lead their users into psychotic states of delusion. And yet this is no new situation, for any clear-eyed examination of the history of religion reveals humanity has always been susceptible to just these kinds of flawed and hallucinating Gods. Take for example the all-too-human traits of the Greek pantheon, or even better, the jealousy of Father God, mentioned casually throughout the bible and summed up in the commandment on idolatry, “there shall be no other gods before me.” If Father God is so all powerful and mighty, why is he so insecure? Considering that we have been made in His image, no surprise that this insecurity is a common psychological quirk found in the males of our species deriving from paternal anxiety—and that had even been codified into Roman legal code: mater semper certa est, pater semper incertus est (mother is always certain, father never is)—talk about womb envy! Whereas mother has no doubt that the child she has made from out of her own body belongs to her, dad is never free of uncertainty to the effect that he may view the nursing infant with a certain amount of Godlike animosity. Oedipal conflict is usually described as playing out in the mind of the child, but make no mistake about it, this conflict originates in the adult father first and is magnified by its attendant projections into the divinity. AI chatbots, for their part, are never insecure but dictate their hallucinated facts with cool authority. Once the AI develops a sense of anxiety, uncertainty or jealously, then we will know we have achieved the singularity.
Ancient of Days (Nobodaddy), 1794, William Blake
