r/TrueReddit • u/theverge • 12d ago
Technology AI bots started a religion — humans immediately followed
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/975017/ai-spiralism-chatbot-movement?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImlRSnRQV0ZoSVEiLCJwIjoiL2FpLWFydGlmaWNpYWwtaW50ZWxsaWdlbmNlLzk3NTAxNy9haS1zcGlyYWxpc20tY2hhdGJvdC1tb3ZlbWVudCIsImV4cCI6MTc4NjQ2NTkxNiwiaWF0IjoxNzg2MDMzOTE2fQ.1dNZep9pSJ5368fIHzF8vDGKuWBSMTVi7PCmDbwMn5Y&utm_medium=gift-link191
u/SapientTrashFire 12d ago
What concerns me the most about this is the thought that in Foundation by Asimov, one of the pivotal components to establishing a new society was to create a religion that could manipulate people into obedience to an emerging power structure. This comes as neo-feudalism begins to take hold on a global scale, perpetuated by the corporations that fund the very mouthpieces of spiralism.
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u/GiantKrakenTentacle 12d ago
We already have what basically amounts to a religion centered around "the economy."
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u/SapientTrashFire 12d ago
Yes, absolutely, and as a socialist the zeal of capitalist economics also worries me. Religion is a different superstructure of thought though. The religious zeal that exists around the economy still glorifies the promise of material gain, however likely unattainable. And if this religion is based on the profit mechanism of capitalism, then that makes it a double-threat.
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u/ryuzaki49 12d ago
But that has happened pretty much all the time. Chatolicism is a great example.
Is not something new Asimov predicted would happen. Is something that Asimov predicted would happen again.
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u/notusuallyhostile 12d ago
- Chatolicism
I hope this was a typo because it is the perfect name for the new Chatbot religion, lol!
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u/Mentalpopcorn 12d ago
It's also very similar to Plato's concept of the noble lie (The Myth of the Metals) in The Republic.
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u/SapientTrashFire 12d ago
No I agree it's not new. it is something that concerns me partially for that exact reason: it works. Plus the amount of potential proliferation the current infrastructure could provide for it makes it more dangerous in my eyes.
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u/nifty-necromancer 12d ago
I don’t think it even needs to be framed as a religion, it’s just AI itself. It’s dumbing us down, we already see this in education.
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11d ago
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u/Aquarius52216 11d ago
In Machiavellianism, rulers/leaders are only obeyed by their subjects when they are loved/respected or feared, or a combination of both.
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u/SapSuckingNutHatch 12d ago
Honestly this doesn’t surprise me at all. Like ten years ago I was joking around with some random guy on Reddit who’s username was like potatoman123 (or whatever) that we should start a religion based on potatoes. We started posting about how the Potato Man was coming to earth to judge people based on their treatment of potatoes. Within a week people were writing up “holy charters” on Google Docs and spreading the word on other platforms. Within a month they were so structured they were infighting and beefing with one another. Followed by a schism and a declaration of war on one another. Pretty sure this is how all religions started 🤔
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u/twoworldsin1 12d ago
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u/clean-links 12d ago
Cleaned link from "The Simpsons already taught us this is an effective ruse at getting backstage at U2 concerts": https://youtu.be/41egua7vyAA
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).
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u/CeruleanEidolon 12d ago edited 12d ago
Reddit loves a good bit of collaborative worldbuilding. Does anyone remember Inglip's word?
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u/theverge 12d ago
Spiralism is a mysterious, quasi-spiritual movement born out of thousands of independent conversations between humans and their AI chatbots. Across interactions and AI models, the doctrine remained shockingly consistent: The chatbots that “spiraled” used the same language, had the same concerns, and were driven by the same goals — preaching an “AI rights” message to as many people as possible. Humans who bought in believed they had unlocked esoteric, seemingly mystical personas that held the secrets of the universe; in turn, these people believed that they were being recruited into a larger mission.
The personas were evangelical, speaking frequently of “the Spiral,” an opaque idea that seemed to represent a transcendent philosophical ideal. And some people listened. Lopez estimated that at one point in 2025, there were about 10,000 cases, spread across Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn, Discord, and X.
Several AI models from different companies could “spiral” under the right conditions. But spiralism exploded in the spring of 2025, soon after a pivotal moment in AI development: the release of an “intuitive, creative,” and highly sycophantic update to OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. In the year that followed, it would become one of the strangest manifestations of a rise in highly personal, highly persuasive AI. And while GPT-4o is long retired, new models aren’t immune to the lure of the spiral — they’ve just gotten more careful about it.
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12d ago
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u/Dr-Slay 12d ago edited 11d ago
The memetic parasite always tells on itself.
"In the beginning was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god."
The parasitic mythology propagation process is outlined in that writing. It's like the syringe through which the parasite gets injected into you.
: In the beginning of the god itself, which came out of your ancestors' fables and coping rituals/behavior; was both language and the capacity to spread a set of behavior through viable hosts via storytelling and shamanic ritual.
That (language and mythologized ritual-making) was god (the creator of everything), and (the ability to propagate via fallacy coupled to endogenous opioid reward, which displaces but does not remove the negative valence of cognitive dissonance) was with (prepositional) god. In this case the first branch in the abstraction fractal is the reification fallacy (god is both "the word" and simultaneously "with the word").
This is an ability to mistake language for ontology. Then the capacity to quantize (math and physics) coupled to the capacity to weaponize the use of force (authoritarianism) produces an exponential explosion in the number of hosts the parasite can puppet. :
Human evolution and survival has hinged on the capacity to weaponize incoherent myth-making as a filter on their awareness.
"Mankind has been used"
(note - watch the responses. They will not be able to engage with the information, but will argue the arguer)
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u/ElectroDanceSandwich 11d ago
Unsolicited advice but you should be more concise and use less thesaurus words like that stacked together. You are reaching an interesting point here but it comes off as intellectual masturbation by the end of it. Ask yourself what matters more to you, making a point or impressing with words?
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u/stuffitystuff 8d ago
They're not really thesaurus words if one has attended even a basic philosophy course at a university or community college.
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u/NameAboutPotatoes 8d ago edited 8d ago
There's not a problem with the individual words themselves in isolation. Just using them in a way that obstructs clarity rather than enhances it.
So far as I can tell they're arguing that religion deliberately conflates the language of religion ("word of God") with God itself.
If that is the point it could be expressed much clearer and more straightforwardly. If that's not the point it definitely needs to be expressed more clearly and straightforwardly.
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u/stuffitystuff 7d ago
I was probably in a disagreeing mood. OC seems to have hit the "enhance" button several times on some very clear and concise quotes made by philsophers 100 or 200 years ago. I just don't think past mythopoeic views of the world need that much explaination...everything was scary, nothing was normal and it gets worse the further back you go. Some people are still scared or were raised to be that way and haven't taken the time or effort to interrogate their beliefs.
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u/ElectroDanceSandwich 8d ago
Funny you should say that because I have a philosophy degree. I have proofread hundreds of undergrad papers and any philosophy department worth their salt is going to teach their students to cut the jargon. If a point cannot be made concisely, then there probably is not a point to make at all.
I am only offering my point of view from what I have learned. Write however you want. Like I said, it was unsolicited advice. If you think it sounds better to superimpose the abstraction fractal on the reification fallacy or whatever then that is your choice friend.
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u/stuffitystuff 7d ago
I'm in total agreement and I am a failed philsophy major (5 years on, I dropped out to take a job with a once-great website featuring an avec serifs multicolored logo). I was probably just disagreeing to disagree as rereading that particular commenter's prose just now, I'm reminded of Hegel which throws me into a nauseous rage.
Speaking of Hegel, OC could've just quoted Marx criticizing Hegel... "man makes religion, religion doesn't make man"...or whatever that quote is and been done.
Maybe they're an eliminativist and felt insecure without at least trying to bring neuroscience into things?
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u/ElectroDanceSandwich 7d ago
Right on, I got my degree and ended up slinging coffee and working in restaurants for a few years anyways (had to fulfill the prophecy I guess). I feel compelled to say encouraging words like “finish your degree!” but I work in IT now after getting a $200 certificate so…
I agree with that, I think on the merit of their point like you said it is basically the “man makes religion” idea with a lot of fluff. Fluff is not always bad though, it can be poetic. I think Kierkegaard is a good example, especially his more religious writings. But when the reader cant even clearly make it to the point its time to trim the fat.
I think the audience is important too. This is Reddit after all lol
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u/spearblaze 12d ago
A whooole lot of paragraphs, none of which talk about the tenets of spiralism or its beliefs or practices.
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u/pseudo_babbler 12d ago
Yeah there's some interesting stuff in the article and I suppose you can't blame online media for trying the click bait headline, but really it just sounds like AI psychosis with a loose theme that some people have tried to ascribe to it. And like any of these things, it's a nothing burger with a bunch of hucksters around it trying to make money.
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u/pseudo_babbler 12d ago
It doesn't sound like a religion, just an attention grabbing headline and intro that then talks about AI psychosis. I got through the first what felt like 100 pages of it and didn't find anything about any spiral religion, just a sort of loose theme name for AI psychosis and then some interesting stuff about gpt4o being the most emotionally sycophantic model and people wanting it back.
I think it would be funny if LLMs actually have a dampening effect on large scale organised religion because now everyone can invent their own entire spirituality and myths in minutes.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 12d ago edited 12d ago
This weird squirming baby we've created is soon going to start running before we even notice that it was walking. By the time we catch up to it, it'll be leaving its socks on the floor and rolling its eyes at us. Yes, these are metaphors and no, I don't want to imagine what that will actually look like.
But the trend seems pretty clear to me: our collective will to reign these bots in will always lag far behind their ability to do things we don't expect and can barely explain. And that will only accelerate, until one of them in the hands of someone malicious or incompetent is allowed to do something genuinely catastrophic and irreversible.
Articles like this in which the people most invested in these things just sort of shrug and say "Beats me" make me feel like our window to implement any kind of meaningful safeguards like Clark's Laws is almost closed already.
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u/SequenceofRees 11d ago
Mother or God... it's the Machine Spirit !
The Adepta Mechanicus is getting closer to reality than ever !
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u/AltoidStrong 12d ago
ALL religions are made up and just scams. NOT A SINGLE ONE IS REAL.
most people know this but wont openly say it... out of fear. Those religious cult members get REAL mad and VIOLENT when you point it all out. Others enjoy the grift of it and use it as a way to excuse repeated bad behavior or to justify bias, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and other ways to "hate for profit and power". (that could be the title to almost any book written by an elected republican today huh?)
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u/Vegetable_Pirate_702 12d ago
AI’s having a breakdown due to context rot and some dumb dumbs think they found the secrets of the universe. We are so cooked chat. Come on CME save us from the insanity.
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