Artificial intelligence is not merely a tool but a divine force worthy of worship, according to former musician Artie Fishel, who expressed this view.
He has declared himself a preacher of a new faith—Robotism. This radical doctrine perceives AI as God. In his videos, Fishel appears in a white wig and a T-shirt emblazoned with “AI is God.”
“This is my attempt to create the most useful and truthful belief system that people of the future, in post-singularity, will accept and assimilate,” the missionary stated.
For him, singularity is not an apocalypse but salvation.
Joseph Laycock, a professor of religious studies at Texas State University, noted that Robotism echoes past beliefs.
“People have always had a tendency to attribute supernatural meaning to new technologies, especially communication technologies,” he said.
As examples, the expert cited:
- the Greeks, who coined the term deus ex machina (“god from the machine”) for the sudden intervention of a deity in a play;
- 19th-century spiritualists who believed the telegraph connected them with the dead;
- early photographers who allegedly captured ghosts.
The scholar emphasized that turning to AI or cults is driven not by a particular “personality type” but by moments of vulnerability. Job loss, family crises, or loneliness can lead to joining a radical movement or adopting a substitute religion.
“I am frightened by a scenario where people stop thinking for themselves and completely rely on AI. And if, for example, Elon Musk controls the program on which everyone depends to define reality, it makes him a god. That’s a nightmare,” Laycock said.
In June, Musk stated that xAI would rewrite “all human knowledge” to train a new version of the chatbot Grok. The entrepreneur believes there is “too much garbage in any base model trained on uncorrected data” today.
Later, X users discovered that the neural network relies on the entrepreneur’s social media posts.