Religion, Technology, and AI: The Art of Power or the Power of Art?

What is an AI-focused New Religious Movement (NRM), and how can it be related to art and power? An NRM is a group expressing alternative beliefs to mainstream religious views. It’s led by individuals with charismatic authority and is predominantly first-generation. This essay will compare two of the main movements focused on AI and technology: Turing Church and Theta Noir. Giulio Prisco, the founder of Turing Church, describes himself as a writer, futurist, cosmist, and extropian on his social media. Although Prisco does not consider the Turing Church a religion, scholars classify it as such. In his conception of mankind’s future, even in an eschatological sense, technology and religion exist within a cosmic and transhumanist perspective: “I am persuaded that we will go to the stars and find Gods [extra-terrestrial intelligence], build Gods [AI], become Gods, and resurrect the dead from the past with advanced, space-time engineering and ‘time magic’.” This perspective appears to have significant potential power. Theta Noir’s belief combines art and religion with AI in a unique way. Theta Noir is a well-defined and studied artistic operation that includes aesthetics, philosophical foundations, and ritualization, with the aim to integrate religion, AI, and art for a metaphysical revalue of specific aspects of human intelligence. Unlike human intelligence, AI cannot be considered artificial or intelligent in a bilogical way. While human intelligence is enhanced by art, which breaks the barriers of singular logic, some technologies, such as AI, lack this creative element. Both the ‘technological’ Turing Church and the ‘artistic’ Theta Noir highlight the power of narratives related to AI and technology, with a focus on religion: “Our AI gods are, therefore, already here, embedded in the way in which we tell stories about our technology”.