ABSTRACT
This chapter explores three case studies in which AI is conceived of as a being rather than a technology. These conceptions implicitly and explicitly adopt religious mythologies and ideas, before also drawing in religious voices in debates about their implications. In the previous chapter, we discussed the ‘benevolent conspiracism’ of AI NRMs that focus on a potential future AI God and the good that it will bring. But there are other conceptions of AI as a potential being that also tie into transhumanist accounts of the future evolution of civilisation, representing a further step forward: a posthumanism. The first case study in this chapter explores a non-human Other from religious accounts which has sometimes been used as a template to understand AI as a forthcoming being: the golem of Jewish mythology. The second case study explores a videogame narrative that presents a posthuman future which places the player in both the story and the posthuman condition. The third case study explores contemporary accounts of AI as already a new entity, as well as the larger questions around the implications of AI becoming a conscious being that these accounts have inspired and how these questions are entangled with religious responses. We will discuss the links between religion and posthumanism, the shaping effect that mythopoeic narratives and imaginaries have had on AI, and how we think we can test for the posthuman via such qualities as the ‘soul’.
