Prompts are like prayers
Table of Contents
I have been feeling a bit off about the recent developments in the ai/tech sector. I wasn't able to put my finger on what exactly was so unsettling, irked me even more. Tried writing about, it but couldn't pinpoint the reason of my unease.
A week into my self imposed hiatus from AI-enslaved nudge driven development, a thought sparked and took shape. I had heard the the naysayers name-call the AI users, "cult-members", but filed it away under hyperbole. This time, while leisurely thinking about nothing in particular, I started noticing the similarities between various aspects of religions, their evolution, beliefs and their counterparts in the AI ecosystem.
My frustration reached a cresendo and I blurted my thoughts here. Not to be taken too seriously.
Promts are like prayers, models are the gods,
if they go unanswered, you have inferior prayer song.
Plead a different model, the prompt-zelots say,
Because, you see, a god can never be wrong.
Software Engineering is slowing transforming,
into a superstitious non-deterministic religious cult.
And I, like many others, am helping it prosper
by going along to get along.
Enough rhyming. Play time is over.
The simliarities continue
Artificial General Intelligence is the ever illusive, ephemeral, omnipotent, omniscient supreme being. Every endeavour is in search of that ultimate AI that will solve all problems for everyone. This defintion justifies, every expense, every act of exploitation in the name of the greater good / god.
The gatekeeping of the models, the walled gardens around them resemble the various cult-like religious organizations that prohibited access to the religious text for centuries. Some force you to pay for access, grant more time to those who pay more, while others pretend to be benign and release the models-weights as open source, which any believer can pray-to in their own temple-at-home-mac-mini with a GPU.
The famous CEOs weild the same power and influence as the popes, ayatollahs or acharyas. Their reach going deep into the political governance structures of their respective countries, sometimes transcending national borders. They want cheap resources: water, land, electricity, rare-earth minirals and data and rarely want to pay taxes. Pervasive agressive lobbying ensures that elected, appointed and coronated leaders alike show up at events with the custodians of the grand temples of AI.
The AI-consultants are your local neighbourhood baba, peer, padre, claiming to be an expert in the divine literature, promising a solution to all your problems by integrating god of AI in your work and life.
Then there are the zealots, who tout how, opening their hearts and hard-drives to AI has transformed their work and life. Their elaborate rites and rituals, tools, tips and tricks outlining how they go about pleasing their god into granting their wish for a snippet of code here and slopping an image together is up for display in hopes of garnering some validation from the cohort of fellow zelots. Some are mono-ai-ests, while others have different models that they prompt for different tasks. All however, want you to believe how doomed you are, if you do not follow in their footsteps.
In line with some tales of awesome gods who have forgotten their superpower because of a curse, the AI needs to be reminded of its capabilities … "You are a senior engineer at a billion dollar tech-startup … now center a div", before your wish can be granted.
There also exist an equally vibrant cohort of anti-ai-thiests or a-ai-thiests comprising of voices like Zitron, Gerard shining a light on the absurdities the way Hitchens and Dabholkar did to the religious ones.
The gullible masses, are being led astray and given jolts of free panic and anxiety with every press release (sometimes mis-)attributing the risks of job-loss, cybersecurity threats, wars to the rise AI.
All this while, you dear human, have to keep shelling out more and more money at every altar, filling the coffers of the powers that be, in order to have a few tokens (pun intended) of their blessings.
No body really understands how things work under-the-hood, because you see, AI works in mysterious ways.
So what does the future of AI religions look like?
If AI delivers on its promises, what would the future look like a 1000 years from now? When human race has forgotten how to think, how to code, how to write, how to reason without the help of a chatbot - will the rites and rituals of that era look as ridiculuously superstitious as the present day religious beliefs which have evolved over millenia?
This obviously depends on whether, humanity survives the absolute decimation of thinking ability and if the present forms of AI outlive era when humanity has forgotten how to build / repair the gazillion things that need to happen exactly right in order for the models to run.
Alternatively, the society may get further divided into those who can build and maintain the AI machines vs those who cannot operate without it, thus, must pay through their teeth to continue to have access to it. In some ways, we already are there.
In between those extremes, the middle path seems more likely. Nothing changes. Economics has the last laugh. Hype and bubble fade away as the real cost of running the models show up on the balance sheets. We continue to go about our lives, sporadically using the chatbot as merely a different search engine when the ask justifies the cost.
AI helps those who helps themselves
This was the title of this post in my first draft. You see, just like the prayers, the prompts only get you what you want if, you are capable, willing and do put the hard work into your pursuit. Almost as if, the god did not exist and the results were a function of your efforts and capabilties alone.
Cheers