Abstract
“My first long haul flight that didn’t fill up and an empty row for me. I have been blessed by the algorithm ”.The phrase ‘blessed by the algorithm’ expresses the feeling of having been fortunate in what appears on your feed on various social media platforms, or in the success or virality of your content as a creator, or in what gig economy jobs you are offered. However, we can also place it within wider public discourse employing theistic conceptions of AI. Building on anthropological fieldwork into the ‘entanglements of AI and Religion’ (Singler 2017a), this article will explore how ‘blessed by the algorithm’ tweets are indicative of the impact of theistic AI narratives: modes of thinking about AI in an implicitly religious way. This thinking also represents continuities that push back against the secularisation thesis and other grand narratives of disenchantment that claim secularity occurs because of technological and intellectual progress. This article will also explore new religious movements, where theistic conceptions of AI entangle technological aspirations with religious ones.
Highlights
Anthropologists and sociologists understand religion through developments in “the relation of religion to social systems” (Fenn 2000), including developments in technology
Four were about the success or failure of content (BBtA type 1), one was in response to the Coleman Lyft tweet, two were abstract in focus, and one of those was in response to someone’s non-Cursed by the Algorithm” (CBtA) about an odd recommendation from the algorithm
A part of this conversation is the development of specific Artificial Intelligence (AI) new religious movements (NRMs), which rest upon a bed of popular discourse, parody, and metaphor that imagines AI in theistic ways and which acquire legitimation through that very conversation
Summary
Anthropologists and sociologists understand religion through developments in “the relation of religion to social systems” (Fenn 2000), including developments in technology. The contemporary discussion about Artificial Intelligence (AI) can often neglect the cultural influence of religion on such social systems and can occlude continuities of thought with religious conceptions of the world. These conversations can present AI as a part of a teleological atheist narrative of rationality, or as a part of the larger technological modernity that drives a presumed secularisation of the world (Singler forthcoming). This article presents an analysis of tweets that mention being ‘blessed by the algorithm’ This analysis is performed to explore both intentional and unintentional continuities of language and conception in popular understandings of AI as a divinity. This article intends to feed into the broader discussion of AI and religion, a discussion that observes the reactions of individual religious formations to AI as well as the potential for religious groups to employ AI technologies in their processes and practices
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