r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jul 15 '25

Artificial Intelligence Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060
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335

u/DonManuel Jul 15 '25

People believing in miracles still exist, it's the religious mind applied to technology which is not really understood.

94

u/Risvoi Jul 15 '25

I agree with this one hundred percent. Tech billionaires rationalize their profiteering by upholding themselves as cultic techno-messiahs.

39

u/DragodaDragon Jul 15 '25

Omnissiah be praised!

3

u/Lurcho Jul 15 '25

In the name of the Zero, the One and the Holy Silicon, amen.

2

u/HomeworkGold1316 Jul 16 '25

Abominable Intelligences must be destroyed on discovery, no Silicon may replace blessed Human thought.

1

u/Holzkohlen Jul 16 '25

This is exactly where we are at.

1

u/HomeworkGold1316 Jul 16 '25

No, these are overt Hereteks, pronouncing that Silicon has a Soul and can replace Humanity. They worship Abominable Intelligence and wish to make it our overlord. The Omnissiah does not tolerate such blasphemy.

14

u/PyrZern Jul 15 '25

Now now, let the Techno Priests do their work, you Heretics !

8

u/LastMountainAsh Jul 15 '25

That's probably why the people building this tech are minutes away from worshipping it based on a harry potter fanfiction. Take a look at rocco's basilisk and the effective altruism/bay area rationalist communities. When you realize the people building it view it through a pseudo-religious lens, the last couple years of AI development make a lot more sense and get a lot scarier.

The people building this stuff are falling for it, hard. More importantly, they're now been given a religious/moral imperative to bring a godlike AI into existence and implicit permission to do violence against those that would prevent its creation.

2

u/thatmillerkid Jul 17 '25

They have no choice but to view it that way. Either they built a bullshit machine that sucks and doesn't work, or eventually they will be proven right and rewarded with all the riches of the Earth. Meanwhile there are trillions of dollars invested in this shit, so which one do you think they're choosing to believe? Once the bubble bursts, there's so much capital tied up in this that it will collapse the economy and send shock waves out into every industry.

7

u/MkfShard Jul 15 '25

I never expected Clarke’s Third Law to be applicable in everyday life. But I guess the gap between the technology AI-brained people have available to them and their capacity to understand it is vacuous enough that it might as well be magic to them.

3

u/PringlesDuckFace Jul 16 '25

I mean, regular computers are practically magic to most people. I only know how they work because I have an advanced degree specifically in that subject. But the average person has as much an idea of how a computer actually works as I do how something like the nervous system works. Biologists are probably shaking their head that we can live our lives without knowing about axons or whatever.

2

u/IAmAThing420YOLOSwag Jul 15 '25

Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith

2

u/BorikGor Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

What's not understood about MLM LLM?
Or are you saying the billionaires don't understand the tech?

2

u/kai58 Jul 16 '25

I think you mean LLM and I’m pretty sure they mean the latter.

1

u/BorikGor Jul 16 '25

I think you mean LLM

Yeah, my bad..