I am fascinated by the connection between artificial intelligence and spirituality.

I am not a godly person, though. I am an atheist. I consider myself spiritual in the sense that I revel in the joy of existence and appreciate the majestic beauty of nature. However, I believe the human perception of spirituality is going to be broadened in terms of the technology we are building.

Global Artificial Intelligence and Gaia

Sooner rather than later, we will manufacture vast artificial neural networks, which will be propped up by nodes via the internet. It will perhaps be a kind of global artificial intelligence (GAI). This mechanistic entity will likely emerge as a byproduct of global artificial neural networks and ever expanding use of federated machine learning, and we will have a massive amounts of training data to feed this hungry machine so that it learns without end.

In a way, this creation would bring the earth to life, mirroring the spiritual ideas of James Lovelock. He wrote a book called Gaea, and postulated that the earth is a living entity.

His original thesis was mind-blowing, but there are very few ways to verify the existence of a living, conscious earth with current epistemological tools. That said, Gaea will absolutely come to life and be verifiable with our use of technology, especially the combination of the internet, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology.

The Age of Intelligent Machines

In my vision. this will usher in a whole new outlook on ourselves as human beings and what we perceive as "spiritual." We will have created something that radiates consciousness on a broad scale, and appears godlike in its motivations. It will even be able to create it's own intelligent machines and push them out into the cosmos, dotting the universe with intelligence, in much the way that futurist Ray Kurzweil imagined in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines."

Indeed, this notion of a global artificially intelligent machine sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but we are actually creating the tools that could make something like this feasible.

Of course, this idea also strikes terror into the hearts of many people, because a machine of this scope and magnitude will have it's own motivations, and if its goals are malevolent toward humankind, the whole situation could spell disaster for our species.

The Right Decisions

This is why the decisions we make regarding technology in the near future must be perfect. There is no room error or accidents. The stakes are high, and we are on a course to building something magnificent and beautiful. We may actually be constructing something that defies the imagination and provides all of us with a clear sense of meaning. The meaning that we are starting to behave as some kind of carbon-based god.

Technology is about much more than just making our lives simpler. It appears that we are going somewhere with it. I can't say that this is predetermined, like Terrence McKenna believed with his thoughts on the "strange attractor at the end of time," but I do believe that our technological innovation has a lot of built-in inevitability. Once these tools come into existence, like artificial intelligence, they cannot be undone or erased.

That is just another reason why making the correct decisions are absolutely crucial over the next few decades.

May we live in interesting times. Scratch that. May we live in strange times.

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Sterlin Luxan is a visionary thinker, cryptocurrency junkie, connoisseur of psychology, an MDMA high priest, and the Mr. Rogers of Anarchism. He is the Communications Ambassador for bitcoin.com, runs a consultancy business in the crypto space, and is a public speaker. He created the doctrine of relational anarchism and contributes to many causes in the thriving liberty ecosystem.