The controversial engineer, entrepreneur and Silicon Valley magnate was already in September 2015 Anthony Levandowski got down to found a brand new religion. He called it the best way of the long run – or WOTF.
According to documents filed with the State of California on the time, Goal of WOTF was to “develop and promote the belief of a man-made intelligence-based deity.”
Levandowski's idea was that we should always all start worshiping a technological god prematurely, even when she wasn't born yet. For on the inevitable day of his arrival, this stands out as the only method to escape his terrible wrath.
Almost a decade later, technology has still not reached the status of a god, neither vengeful nor benevolent. But the use of spiritual language in relation to technology is widespread.
Those working on AI, for instance, tell us that their powers will soon develop into “magical“. Modern prophets like Ray Kurtzweil and his many followers insist that we’re on the verge of a “Singularity“, during which technology will allow us to beat all previous limitations to human existence, including death.
Figures like Sam Altmanthe CEO of OpenAI will be heard Saying things like “I don’t pray for God to be on my side, I pray to be on God’s side,” and “working on these models definitely appears like being on the side of the angels.”
Even billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey assured us on a recent television show that modern smart technology is nothing lower than “Wonder-“.
The tech religion
This excess of spiritual rhetoric may very well be attributed to the conspicuous exaggeration that characterizes Silicon Valley capitalism. In fact, encasing goods with the patina of the divine is hardly a brand new marketing strategy.
But in line with Greg Epstein, the secular ethicist and former humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, we discuss modern technology in religious terms because modern technology (or what he calls “technology”) has effectively develop into a faith. And “not only one religion.” Epstein declares technology the “dominant religion of our time.”
No other force on the planet receives as much praise. No other power requires a lot dedication. Nothing else has such a firm grip on the rituals and practices of our each day lives.
At first glance, the concept that technology has develop into a brand new religion seems to have some explanatory power. It's not only things like smartphones, algorithms, apps and social media which are an integral a part of our economic world. Nor is it simply that they’ve so infiltrated every aspect of unusual experience that it will be almost inconceivable to operate without them.
It's since the cultures which have emerged around these tools have come to dominate the best way we understand ourselves, our collective existence, and even our place within the universe.
As Epstein puts it: “Technology gives modern Western life, polarized and divided in countless ways, a typical principle, a typical story by which we tell ourselves who we’re.” Furthermore, technology proclaims “moral and “ethical messages not as mere ancillary features, but as an integral a part of their overall value proposition”.
That's why corporations like Google or Alphabet and individuals like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg usually are not satisfied with accumulating untold wealth. They take it upon themselves to provide commands like “Don’t be evil,” “Do the best thing,” and “Make history.” They enthusiastically proclaim the excellent news of a “connected future” that “gives everyone a voice” and “transforms society.”
As a result, Epstein argues:
Tech shouldn’t be an unusual “industry” where profit and loss statements, products sold, or efficiency gains can tell their story. The story of the business success of technology (…) is a story about how people understand themselves on the planet. It is a story that makes us feel that our existence has meaning and that our each day life has meaning.
Elites and Extras
Epstein's evaluation of this latest religion may be very detailed and has two basic components.
On the one hand, he suggests that technology religion in its current form serves to divide humanity right into a small variety of chosen people and the overwhelming majority of the damned. It suggests that chosen souls will soon be uploaded to a paradise of disembodied immortality, while the remainder develop into slaves to the machines or condemned to oblivion.
On the opposite hand, as his title suggests, Epstein is a technology agnostic – not a technology atheist. His call is for the “reformation” of the tech religion, not its abolition. He due to this fact recommends that we place our trust in what he calls a wide range of “apostates and heretics”: those that develop critiques of technology religion and offer credible alternatives.
On this side of the ledger, Epstein places proponents of “responsible” and “ethical technology.” He hopes that from a loosely connected group of such personalities, a “community” will in some way emerge that can oppose the established order, take ownership of the tech narrative, and steer it toward human justice and equality.
Robin Wolfson Agency.
Epstein's idea of technology as religion has heuristic value, but in some unspecified time in the future it gets pushed a bit. He begins to achieve for a connection that he can create between the 2 realms. His central argument is lost. Instead, we have now a spread of possible affinities, some more believable than others.
Furthermore, despite Epstein's repeated attempts to assert otherwise, it is way from accurate to say that today's Silicon Valley capitalism is the primary type of capitalism to explain itself as ethical or spiritual moderately than a crudely business endeavor.
Of the 18th Century Arguments to the Founding Fathers of NeoliberalismCapitalism has at all times presented itself as an essentially moral project geared toward this transforming unruly human passions into rational human interests. What is Adam Smith's famous “invisible hand“of the market, if not a secularized version of Providence?
One of probably the most striking features of Tech Agnostic, which consists largely of interviews with industry and academic elites, is Epstein's incredible access to those numbers – little doubt made possible by his association with elite institutions like Harvard and MIT.
But about halfway through the book, Epstein stumbles over the next formulation: “For every tech executive or highly educated Westerner benefiting from AI and social media connections, what number of traumatized content moderators are there in Manila (…) and lithium miners within the Congo?” (…) Chinese factory staff?”
Tech, he suggests slightly later, “needs less broad and specific narratives and rather more detailed character studies of the actors currently being regarded as extras.” Those who profit from technology's many successes can take the time “To higher understand the truth of those who are suffering here and now?”
These are excellent questions that Epstein, for all his insights, could have asked himself very effectively.
