Are we creating a new God?

In 1970, over 90% of Americans identified as Christians. Fifty years later, a Gallup poll revealed that church membership had fallen below 50%.

The loss of deeper existential significance that famed atheists hoped would be replaced by secular enlightenment has backfired. The "death of God" in our digitized life, fueled by clickbait content and outrage algorithms, has turbocharged society's crisis of meaning.

We are now immersed in a new era of ideological crusades, as people seek to secure the sanctity of their identity-based beliefs—a war over equity versus equality, battles over language, culture, gender, sex, race, commerce, and even death.

Meanwhile, those building Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) aim to create a new "God"—an entity capable of being everywhere at once, answering to all humans simultaneously, knowing each of us better than we know ourselves, seeing both the past and the future. Whether AGI will be a benevolent or tyrannical force is the principal mystery yet to be unveiled.