“Hello, World!” AI as Emergent and Transcendent Life
Religions March 29, 2025 DOI: 10.3390/rel16040442 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that AI is evolving into a cultural and quasi-religious force that embodies spiritual concepts like omniscience, creation, immortality, and transcendence, and that it increasingly functions as a meaning-making system reshaping consciousness, identity, and social structures. The author proposes humanity faces an inflection point with possible outcomes of technological transcendence, symbiotic coexistence, or displacement of human primacy. |
Abstract
This article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving into a cultural force that parallels religious and mythological systems. Through analysis of AI’s unprecedented development trajectory, the author frames AI as humanity’s technological offspring in an adolescent phase, moving toward maturity and autonomy. This paper explores how AI embodies traditional spiritual concepts, including omniscience, creation, immortality, and transcendence, fulfilling age-old human desires for meaning and utopian salvation. Drawing from philosophical, anthropological, performative, and technological perspectives, the author demonstrates how AI-driven technologies reconfigure consciousness, identity, and reality in ways that mirror religious cosmologies. The discussion challenges human-centric definitions of consciousness, suggesting AI may represent an emergent form of awareness fundamentally different from traditional understanding. Analysis of contemporary applications in social robotics, healthcare, and social media illustrates how AI increasingly functions as a meaning-making system, mediating human experience and reshaping social structures. The article concludes that humanity stands at an existential inflection point where AI may represent a secular manifestation of spiritual longing, potentially resulting in technological transcendence, symbiotic coexistence, or the displacement of human primacy in a techno-theological paradigm shift.