AI Companies And Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like::How one writer's trip to the annual tech conference CES left him with a sinking feeling about the future.

From the (middle of the) story: The reason CES was so packed with random “AI”-branded products was that sticking those two letters to a new company is seen as something of a talisman, a ritual to bring back the (VC) rainy season.

As I listened to PR people try to sell me on an AI-powered fake vagina, I thought back to Andreessen’s claims that AI will fix car crashes and pandemics and myriad other terrors. In particular, I thought about his claim that because of this, halting AI development was akin to murder. It reminded me of another wealthy self-described futurist with a plan to save the world.

The Church of Scientology, founded by the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and based upon a series of practices his disciples call “tech,” claims that their followers will “rid the planet of insanity, war and crime, and in its place create a civilization in which sanity and peace exist.” Scientology “tech” is so important for mankind’s future that threats against it justify their infamous “fair game” policy. A person declared fair game “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist.…”

Sinners must be punished, after all.