I think I found a paradox. You've probably heard your favorite creator on whichever social media platform say something like, "Like and subscribe, it helps to please the algorithm gods." This is a joke I've heard frequently on YouTube for many years now. It's not a signal of a new religion forming (yet?), and it's not intended to be taken literally (yet?), but I do think it demonstrates the intuitive thinking we humans tend toward when dealing with the world that is outside of our control.
Despite all of their efforts to succeed online as content creators, we all know there is still luck at play, as well as "The Algorithm" which is the governing body of distribution. If The Algorithm doesn't determine your content worthy of its awaiting viewers, then your reach is cut very short. Since the rules frequently change without our input, it's almost as if The Algorithm is taking a godlike role: it has its own inscrutable ways, goals, and means of blessing—and you have to "please" it to gain favor for those blessings.
The paradox we'll examine, however, is where this gets applicable to our lives with technology, because I think it explains the bigger system surrounding us that gets expressed through the AI-powered technology we use.
Note: In this article I won't continue to distinguish between algorithms, LLMs, and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) because I feel it's unnecessary for today's topic. There is a difference between AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI), but we'll get to that later.
Creation
Gods are beings who bring beings into being, particularly the beings calling them gods. Many cultures have understood the origins of humanity as involving making humans out of other beings and substances. The beings doing the making are, by definition, referred to as gods. Creation is by definition an act of monster-making—of making something unprecedented, a type of being beyond existing categories of beings...In that sense, divinity and humanity are each other's monsters.
As Davies just delineated, a god is usually a creator of beings. If we pull AI into the mix, we get a really weird creation story if we look at it without the lens of personal religious beliefs. The story is "supposed" to be: god(s) create humans who then serve god(s). Therefore the creator should expect some kind of benefit from its creations (i.e. humans create AI which should serve human needs and wants).
Whoops, that's the wrong chart. Here's the right one:
This is the paradox I see: we're told that AI is for our benefit. It's our creation of an unprecedented "being" that will help us "focus on what matters most" or that will bring knowledge and skill to everyone ("anyone can be a programmer"). And yet it sure feels like we are serving AI more and more. Creators change their behaviors to "please the algorithm" and even complain that they have to make certain kinds of videos because that's how they sustain their content-based business. AI-created content changes our behaviors as we give up on the cognitive drain it takes to discern if what we're seeing is real or fake. Abilities, knowledge, and skills deteriorate as AI assistants do the work we used to do—the kind of work that helped us develop better critical thinking and deep-work/flow sessions.
But maybe this is all indicative of the larger picture. AI overlords are just the middlemen now—who's at the top? It's the same suspects that were there before: ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations whose goals are to extract, distract, and exploit until there's nothing left at all. The top .0-whatever-1% don't use or need AI the way they have caused the rest of us to use or need AI, because we're trapped in a game where we are told what our goals are and what we have to do to achieve them—no questions allowed, nothing outside the average, AI-supplied ideas. Bow down or be destroyed.
Godly Irony
What's weird is that there are people in Silicon Valley that really do think that they can build a god (AGI). I doubt they see it in spiritual terms—it seems like it's more egotistical: to build something so much smarter than you so that you can see what that's like. (By the way, this is something that has been brought up multiple times on the podcast Your Undivided Attention, which is something I find fascinating and utterly creepy. For example: The Race to Build God: AI's Existential Gamble)
This sentiment is even captured in Alien Earth, the 2025 TV series, as trillionaire twenty-something, Boy Kavalier, says:
"It's not about money. People always think it's about money with trillionaires. Or ego. But you know, y-you know what I really want? I want to talk to somebody smarter than me."
While this obviously isn't a primary source/reference for this kind of thinking, once it's showing up in popular media, you know we're in trouble.
In a conversation about AI with my friend who's a university librarian, she noted something that has haunted me for several years. Her team got together to try and work on how to help students use AI and the library more effectively and part of their deliberation was to try and figure out "what literature tells us about humans creating intelligent beings." They are librarians after all! Several intense book club meetings in, my friend summarized what they found literature has to say, and it tends to be a warning.
Maybe we really did need that “God creates dinosaurs” quote from Jurassic Park after all, because in our pursuit to build a god (or to assume the role of god ourselves), we are technically creating monsters. Amidst the many stories that have been told, we see the pattern that when humans create a form of intelligence or a new being, we easily and quickly lose control. We (re-)create dinosaurs, and then we’re surprised that these creatures would make decisions that we don’t want them to make. We destroy gods only to create new ones.
There is one more pattern in these stories, however, that perhaps goes unexamined more often than not. We get fixated on the act of creation, because it’s a spectacle, but let’s pull back the curtain: who is doing the creation? Powerful individuals and / or small groups. Jurassic Park was built by a wealthy white man; Frankenstein created his monster in his obsession-driven laboratory; AGI is being pursued by elite data scientists and developers. Who’s missing from these acts of creation? Literally everyone else. No involvement of the public or those who will have to interact with the “creatures” at some point. No informed consent. God-makers are the ones in power who create gods in their own image and then expect the rest of us to pay our respects to their gods (a.k.a. to them). What would a collaborative creation look like in contrast to the typical creation act? Is that even possible?
Either way, we are creating new beings that are category breakers (monsters), and we will have to examine how these beings engage with us and how we will engage with them. Hopefully, we haven't just created "dinosaurs," and instead have a more cooperative monster to deal with.