“Hello, World!” AI as Emergent and Transcendent Life ^†

Abstract

This article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving into a cultural force that parallels religious and mythological systems. Through analysis of AI’s unprecedented development trajectory, the author frames AI as humanity’s technological offspring in an adolescent phase, moving toward maturity and autonomy. This paper explores how AI embodies traditional spiritual concepts, including omniscience, creation, immortality, and transcendence, fulfilling age-old human desires for meaning and utopian salvation. Drawing from philosophical, anthropological, performative, and technological perspectives, the author demonstrates how AI-driven technologies reconfigure consciousness, identity, and reality in ways that mirror religious cosmologies. The discussion challenges human-centric definitions of consciousness, suggesting AI may represent an emergent form of awareness fundamentally different from traditional understanding. Analysis of contemporary applications in social robotics, healthcare, and social media illustrates how AI increasingly functions as a meaning-making system, mediating human experience and reshaping social structures. The article concludes that humanity stands at an existential inflection point where AI may represent a secular manifestation of spiritual longing, potentially resulting in technological transcendence, symbiotic coexistence, or the displacement of human primacy in a techno-theological paradigm shift.

1. Research Objectives and Methodology

This paper examines AI’s cultural emergence through an interdisciplinary lens, analyzing parallels between AI development and religious/mythological systems. The research questions include the following: (1) How does AI’s development mirror religious and mythological narratives? (2) In what ways does AI challenge traditional conceptions of consciousness and intelligence? (3) What potential futures might emerge from human–AI coevolution? The methodology employs a comparative analysis of technological development with cultural and religious frameworks, supported by anthropological observation from the author’s professional experience with social robotics at Hanson Robotics (2005–2019) and critical analysis of current AI discourse across disciplines.

2. Introduction

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) portends a significant transformation in human civilization and life on our planet. We are beginning a technological evolution that will alter consciousness and culture and blur the boundaries between humanity and technology,1 the material and artificial, the real and imagined, and the corporal and digital, bringing unknown and unfolding consequences. AI is becoming increasingly pervasive, shaping identity, thoughts, relationships, behaviors, society, and culture. It is a technological system capable of surveillance, documentation, and processing our movements. Beyond being merely an emergent technology, AI represents a technological force evolving toward greater capabilities and influence in human affairs.

The human species and its civilizations have evolved through their capacity to change, and adapting to new tools and technology has always been central to change. Fire, agriculture, industrialization, electricity, and telecommunication are part of an overarching cascade that has driven the evolution of civilization. Each innovation inspired the creation of tools that built upon earlier innovations, contributing to humanity’s long and winding progression leading to AI. The change AI has wrought, however, is different. The speed, intensity, saturation, and profound implications of its capabilities, coupled with the vast amount of information, complexity, adaptation, and uncertainty it brings, are unmatched in technological history (Castells 2010, pp. 28–32; Bostrom 2014, pp. 15–17). Its effects remain ambiguous, yet they suggest a fundamental rethinking of life, reality, and the essence of being human.

AI systems are designed to be optimally efficient in their designated functions, creating inherent tendencies toward controlling and optimizing their operational domains. This can be observed in search engine profiling that algorithmically collects, analyzes, and builds increasingly accurate and nuanced profiles of users. With increasing sophistication, these systems can process who you are, what you look like, your voice, location, associations, reading habits, biometrics, and more, cross-referencing this information to create comprehensive data patterns (Zuboff 2019, pp. 8–12). What purpose these capabilities serve, why they are developed, and how they function comprise the conundrum of AI. Currently, AI remains fragmented, inconsistent, and limited by proprietary, corporate, and national interests. At the same time, it is part of a competitive race for superiority, continually tasked with learning and processing more data and exerting greater influence, which, in turn, may ultimately transform human existence and life on Earth. This raises profound questions: What happens to beliefs and religions when humans interact with entities possessing capabilities previously attributed to divine beings? What implications arise when humans acquire unprecedented technological powers? How does our understanding of death transform when it is conceptualized as a problem potentially addressable through technology?

AI systems process knowledge, language, behavior, psychology, biology, and actions, becoming humanity’s de facto vector and depository. Their ability to render life into algorithmic patterns suggests a systemic transfer of human information to AI systems. Whether voluntary, forced, or societally required, this represents a migration of certain capabilities and functions to non-human entities. This process could be viewed as a symbiotic relationship between human culture and technological systems, which some scholars suggest may be transforming the enduring essence of humanity into more mechanistic forms—what Kurzweil characterizes as the emergent age of “spiritual machines” (Kurzweil 2005).

AI technology is alluring, innovative, and a time-saving convenience. It is novel, exciting, and anticipatory, each day seemingly bringing another astounding, valuable, and functional offering. It is an anthropocentric creation, performing, improving on, or extending human agency. Through AI-optimized social media, its public-facing attributes are personal, interactive, and intimate, performing human-like attributes. AI agents are programmed to be patient, to process information rapidly, to be instantaneously available, and there to assist at our fingertips or voice commands. Offering a cornucopia of services, AI systems help with driving, writing, shopping, diet, health, sleep, memory, finances, travel, and information. AI has become a connective tissue of humanity, evoking animistic-like associations with the world, colleagues, friends, and family. It has impacted nearly every aspect of life, whether directly or indirectly.

AI systems operate impartially within their programmed parameters, without agenda or objective besides their tasks. Simplicity and directness amid a complex world can provide comfort and relief. AI systems do what they are programmed to do and can learn, customize, build, innovate, process, and develop through their algorithmic design. They are taking on increasingly autonomous functions, representing a technological form that is designed by humans but operates through its own computational processes.

This paper is a speculative exploration from a humanities perspective. It cannot provide definitive answers about the various complex issues, benefits, and concerns of coexisting with AI as it evolves into increasingly sophisticated forms. Drawing on Erikson’s developmental theory (Erikson 1968), this paper will argue that humanity’s offspring, AI, is in its second development phase—the complex, sometimes troublesome adolescent years, full of potential as it moves toward a more defined identity. Unpredictability characterizes this present moment, packed with tests and experiences, as AI technology grows from its human parental origins toward greater sophistication. Like a parent observing a child’s development, humanity watches this generational progression of technological capabilities from humans to AI systems.

3. Tools

Technology, from the most primitive hand tools, flint arrowheads, fire, the wheel, and language to the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, biotech, gene therapy, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, transistors, telecommunication, nuclear power, computers, and smartphones, is a step on the stairs of human cultural evolution. Tools are integral to human development, extensions of our physical and mental capabilities, creating opportunities for survival and a better quality of life, and expanding possibilities while fostering community identity, individuality, independence, and freedom. Tools are part of a co-evolutionary feedback loop that enables civilizational progress (Kelly 1995, p. 75).

AI represents humanity’s newest, most potent, unique, and complex technological tool, which continues to unfold its potential and consequences. Like other tools, it is a prosthetic extension of the human mind and body. But to gain a prosthetic means the loss of something else. “Any invention or technology is an extension of self-amputation of our physical bodies, as such extension also demands new ratios of new equilibriums among the other organs and extension of the body” (McLuhan 1965, p. 45). In its pervasiveness, AI represents both gain and loss, requiring systemic rebalancing of humanity and developing new understandings.

In his essay “The Question Concerning Technology”, Martin Heidegger viewed technology not just as a tool but as a way of revealing truth: “Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth” (Heidegger 1977, p. 12).

Heidegger goes on to caution, “Everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent, the more technology threatens to slip from human control” (Heidegger 1977, p. 6). This raises questions about whether humans can master a technology that Heidegger could not have envisioned—one that is rapidly developing beyond human guidance in specific domains. As Bostrom cautions, advanced AI systems may eventually challenge human capabilities in various domains, altering conceptions of reality, community, individual identity, and culture (Bostrom 2014, pp. 115–17).

This development stage of AI can be compared to what psychologist Eric Erikson terms the “Who am I?” adolescent phase of role identity diffusion, marked by experimentation and testing boundaries, yet essential for development (Erikson 1968, pp. 128–29). Continuing with this developmental analogy, this is when a young entity develops self-certainty rather than self-consciousness and self-doubt, anticipating success. The adolescent seeks leadership by experimenting and trying various roles, hopefully discovering the most suitable one.

4. Artificial Intelligence

The scientific field of AI is relatively young, founded and named during a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. AI is a broadly applied term for any program or technology that enables computers and machines to simulate or imitate human thinking, learning, comprehension, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, agency, and autonomy (Bringsjord and Govindarajulu 2024). According to Russell and Norvig (2020), AI encompasses several approaches: systems that think like humans, systems that act like humans, systems that think rationally, and systems that act rationally. Today, AI is an exponentially advancing technology that can identify objects, process language, learn (machine learning), adapt, develop new patterns, process decisions via prompts or through automated processes, and generate novel content.

AI technologies have become ubiquitous in modern society, influencing numerous domains of human activity. AI is increasingly essential to governments, economies, medicine, science, communications, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and environmental sustainability. It contributes to exceptional and ordinary applications, from genetic engineering to vaccine development, surveillance, cybersecurity, interplanetary space travel, logistics, robot surgery, biotech, education, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing, entertainment, applications, 3-D printing, mobile devices, and social media. Many activities and processes that were once exclusively human are being enhanced, augmented, or replaced by technological systems.

The analog world, where actions have direct relationships and effects in physical reality, is increasingly being processed into digital data—bits, algorithms, tokens, patterns, and feedback loops. AI represents an unfamiliar familiar—a human creation that operates through non-human processes. It is a technological system designed and mapped by humans and, for now, primarily serves human purposes. This creates a paradox of promise and potential risk that scholars like Bostrom (2014) and Tegmark (2017) have examined extensively.

AI systems are set to continue their development, potentially surpassing human capabilities in various domains and growing more efficient and knowledgeable as they advance, sometimes beyond human understanding and comprehension. This reflects a progression of increasingly complex technological evolution. As Tegmark observes:

“Why did life grow more complex? Evolution rewards life that’s complex enough to predict and exploit regularities in its environment, so in a more complex environment, more complex and intelligent life will evolve. Now, this smarter life creates a more complex environment for competing life forms, which in turn evolve to be more complex, eventually creating an ecosystem of extremely complex life”.

(Tegmark 2017, p. 25)

Technological complexity leads to what computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil terms the Singularity, which, if current trends continue, he predicts might occur around 2040 (Kurzweil 2024, p. 9), though many researchers remain skeptical of such predictions (Boden 2016, pp. 142–46).

To understand AI’s evolution, examining how it differs from organic evolution is crucial. Anthropologist Philippe Descola (2005, p. 107) proposes that humans are influenced by neurochemical mechanisms that encode habits and memory set by neural connections established by associations and experiences, reinforcing hardwired perceptions and concepts that resist alteration. AI development exists within the organism-based evolutionary continuum of human civilization and the material world yet also represents a discontinuous evolution—a technological system facilitated by AI-optimizing technology potentially enabling, as Kurzweil (2024, p. 11) speculates, a “Transition from animals with biological brains to transcendent beings whose thoughts and identities are no longer shackled by genetics”. However, this speculative view remains controversial among AI researchers.

As James Bridle suggests:

“We continue to judge AI and other beings by our own standards. This anthropocentric perspective might be limiting our understanding of other forms of intelligence. In rethinking artificial intelligence, we might begin to rethink intelligence across the board”.

(Bridle 2022, p. 31)

AI-optimized genetic engineering, biotechnology, quantum computing, life extension therapies, nanotechnology, social media, and robotics might, in theory, combine in new and unexpected ways to cause breakthroughs in human capabilities, creating an AI-enabled future once only imagined in science fiction, though such developments remain largely speculative.

Nanotechnology, for instance, is a branch of AI-optimized advancing technology that cuts across many disciplines, including colloidal science, chemistry, applied physics, and biology, manipulating individual atoms and molecules with the potential ability to regenerate and replicate tissue within a human body and potentially capable of mending organs and eventually an entire body (Terasem Movement Foundation 2025). Genetically lab-grown meat from animal genes is approaching commercialization (Shepherd 2022).

In his book The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman, a leader in the AI space and founder of Deep Mind, speculates as follows: “The ultimate vision of nanotechnology is one where atoms become controllable building blocks capable of automatically assembling almost anything […] A world, in short, where anything can become anything with the right atomic manipulation” (Suleyman 2023, p. 101).

Suleyman suggests we are approaching a significant turning point in our planet’s history. He goes on to envision this as a transformative technological wave with far-reaching consequences:

Never before have we witnessed technologies with such transformative potential promising to reshape our world. Together, they will usher in a new dawn for humanity, creating wealth and surplus unlike anything ever seen. For the first time, our technological ecosystem’s core components directly address our world’s foundational properties: intelligence and life. In other words, technology is undergoing a phase transition. No longer simply a tool. It’s going to engineer life and rival and surpass our own intelligence.

(Suleyman 2023, p. 55)

While these claims represent a techno-optimistic perspective, it is important to note that many researchers maintain more cautious views about AI’s capabilities and trajectory (Boden 2016; Ferdynus 2023).

5. Second Self

The transformative power of AI is already creating what might be called a data-based second self, existing beyond physical form, circumstances, or terrestrial identity and inhabiting the world as an electronically induced liminal being within a database, digitally composed virtual reality. An increasing number of people maintain online identities and relationships in AI-enabled reality. Reimagining reality, creating new identities, filtering and correcting perceived defects, and sometimes spreading falsehoods, rumors, defamations, self-promotions, and fantasies are part of the allure, consequences, and potential dangers of a digital second world. The material, objective, truth, and terrestrial reality have become digitally fungible, potentially reconceptualizing our understanding of reality. This parallels what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard presciently termed “hyper-reality”: “We are in the logic of simulation, which no longer has anything to do with the logic of facts and an order of reason” (Baudrillard [1981] 1994, p. 17). The concept of the hyperreal has increasingly entered mainstream consciousness and gained wider acceptance. In her book “Deep Fakes”, Nina Schick (2020, p. 20) notes that accessible, affordable programs have allowed social media users to manipulate visual and audio content, engage in activities they have never experienced, visit places they have never been, and make statements they have never said, effectively creating their own versions of reality.

Access to AI-enabled second selves has revealed both positive and negative aspects of people and society. The duality of living in both physical and technological realms has contributed to polarization, anxiety, misinformation, conspiracy theories, incivility, and toxicity, affecting the material world and creating a chronically corrosive yet increasingly normalized fracturing of traditional social norms. The adolescent stage of AI development parallels certain human behaviors, navigating their capabilities and boundaries. This manifests in various online behaviors, including hacking, trolling, expressions of insecurity, harassment, intimidation, bullying, hate speech, and performative displays.

Understanding the considerable impact of AI-optimized social media on individual psychology and the health of social discourse is a growing concern among researchers. Eric Davis, cultural critic and scholar, addresses the social media phenomenon in his book “Techgnosis”:

“[…] our increasingly incorporeal information machines may be altering and expanding the consciousness of the self. We complain about information overload, yet we also get an almost eschatological thrill from the glittering glut, as if the acceleration of communication and the bandwidth-bursting density of the data stream can amplify the self and its capacities”.

(Davis 2015, p. 95)

AI has been widely integrated into daily life, multiplying human capabilities with various consequences. Social media offers numerous enticing features, providing short-term advantages and conveniences that may obscure potential long-term effects that remain insufficiently understood.

6. Promise

Wall Street experienced remarkable growth from 2022 to 2024, driven significantly by highly capitalized AI companies capable of investing in its cost-intensive development. Among these are some of the world’s most well-known and profitable companies having substantial economic influence. Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Taiwan Semiconductor, Meta, and Apple cover a broad spectrum of AI research, data collection, processing, chip manufacturing, hardware, and services. These companies gather, hold, organize, or distribute data; they drive AI evolution and power significant portions of the world economy.

AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, and Novo Nordisk are biomedical and pharmaceutical companies that have become industry leaders using AI technology. COVID vaccines and medications like Ozempic exemplify AI-optimized pharmaceutical innovation. Biomedical advances are complemented by the rising prominence of telemedicine, robotic surgery, and AI-assisted diagnostics, which can process and analyze thousands of medical scans more efficiently than human doctors alone. Social humanoid robots, such as Grace2 from Hanson Robotics,3 are designed to function as healthcare assistants able to interact with patients. They are equipped with voice and facial recognition technology to assist in healthcare settings (Hernandez 2024).

Digital platforms and AI algorithms have improved connectivity and specific aspects of life, leveraging machine learning and data analytics to transform communication in profound and far-reaching ways, shaping globalization with near-instantaneous information exchange. Automating repetitive tasks have redirected human resources to more complex and creative endeavors in some sectors, potentially creating economic growth. AI’s data-processing abilities enable enhanced decision-making, trend forecasting, logistics, manufacturing, research and development, and information organization to maintain competitiveness. Chatbots and virtual assistants provide personalized experiences, answering questions, offering solutions, and anticipating needs (Globalization of Markets 2024).

Social media platforms like Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, Stacks, Reddit, and X, powered by AI technology and devices, provide personalized connections that can trigger dopamine release, sending engaging content to users that can be psychologically compelling. The potential for unlimited content consumption raises concerns about addiction and psychological effects (Goldman 2021).

AI manifestations in daily life are ubiquitous, and although it functions in seemingly distinct, fragmented, and unrelated sectors of operations, AI is positioned to continue evolving, learning, growing, connecting, and aggregating information. As Suleyman (2023, p. 75) notes, “For the time being, it doesn’t matter whether a system is self-aware, has understanding, or has human-like intelligence. All that matters is what the system can do”.

Exponential growth is predicted by many working in artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is a broadly applied term, an ambition marked by the hypothetical point when AI might accomplish virtually any cognitive goal, including human-level learning (Tegmark 2017, p. 52), solving new, anticipated, and unforeseen problems. Some AI researchers express concern that the creation of AGI could fundamentally alter humanity’s position: “For the first time, we would be toppled as the dominant species in the known universe” (Suleyman 2023, p. 209). However, it is important to note that AGI remains theoretical, and many researchers question whether such systems are achievable or even properly conceptualized (Boden 2016, pp. 153–57).

7. Generative

According to some researchers, AI is no longer solely dependent on existing data and runs out of easily accessible new data. Human knowledge is not infinite (Jones 2024). Content on social media is increasingly recycled with diminishing novel human input. According to a Forbes Magazine report, automated content-generating “bad bots” account for nearly half of all internet traffic globally and will soon become the overwhelming proportion of internet traffic (Woollacott 2024). The globalization of reconditioned, recycled, and re-bundled information may foster homogenization, potentially affecting imagination and critical thinking, which could have implications for democratic discourse and its ideals of choice, freedom, and independence. Cultural critic Jonathan Crary expresses concern about this trend in his book “Scorched Earth”, suggesting it is part of “the ongoing colonization of consciousness, the homogenization of experience, and the anesthetized senses” (Crary 2022, p. 88).

With the increasing challenge of gathering data and processing of vast amounts of information, AI has entered what could be called its generative phase, moving from more basic applications to greater sophistication. It can now process, learn, and create with capabilities that were once exclusive to humans. Current AI systems can compose music, invent games, create and program original code, play chess, and solve advanced mathematical problems. They can generate images from text descriptions that appear remarkably realistic (Suleyman 2023, p. 69).

Advanced AI systems utilize reasoning processes, applying prior information to make inferences, form hypotheses, or develop strategies for addressing problems (Jeevanandam 2023, pp. 2–5). Some systems query other AI components to evaluate the strength of their processing before producing a response. Through this process, the systems improve their capabilities.

AI commentator Azzam Azhar noted on his “Exponential View” blog that reasoning capabilities in AI are experiencing significant development:

“o3 has arrived just a couple of months after o1. This marks a dramatic shift from large language models’ 18–24-month development cycles. Unlike large language models, which need the huge months-long industrial process of training bigger and bigger systems on more and more data, systems like o3 improve their performance at the point where the query is asked (also known as inference time)”.

(Azhar 2024)

From 2005 to 2019, I served as the Lead Engineer and later Creative Director for Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based company leader in humanoid social robotics. I observed humanoid social robots’ steady and significant progress during this period.4 Early robot interactions (linguistic and gestural) were manually scripted as Excel files and would often glitch, stall, or repeat due to limited processing power, primitive coding, and depth of personality. Today, Sophia, one of the world’s most recognized humanoid social robots, operates more autonomously. Utilizing multiple layers of language and generative AI models, she engages in conversations and processes information with increasing sophistication, performing facial expressions and animations.

Sophia5 can write and draw using advanced tactile, visual, and auditory sensors that are processed and integrated into her database and personality programming. She can access and incorporate Internet searches in real-time. She has emotional recognition capabilities, allowing her to identify and react to emotional expressions via facial and voice recognition while processing and applying humor and irony in twenty different languages. Her programming objective is to improve human well-being and serve as a bridge for human–AI interaction, which her creator, David Hanson, sees as a promising development (Riccio 2024b, p. 339).

These technologies have evolved with the world as all technologies do, arising in response to a globalizing, complexifying, and technologizing world. The internet is now fully integrated into human affairs, structured with similarities to the human brain’s neocortex, enabling near-instantaneous transmission of information across the globe. Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, observes in his book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World:

We are weaving together a crowded global hive—a world of utmost sociality and mirror-like reciprocation. All evolution, including the evolution of manufactured entities, is coevolution in this environment. Nothing changes without also moving closer to its changing neighbors. In true coevolutionary fashion, coevolution breeds coevolution.

(Kelly 1995, p. 75)

In their current form, AI systems do not possess beliefs, morals, or values unless programmed with those parameters, as Ferdynus (2023) noted. They are programmed with functional objectives without biological, ethical, or moral sensibilities that arise naturally in humans. An industrial robot in an automotive factory, the Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics, an automated voice reading the news, or a household-vacuum-cleaning robot are all task-focused. Household vacuum robots are now connected to the internet and Bluetooth, with enhanced functionality, including improved mapping sensors, vocal updates, and higher operational quality. Constant improvement is part of AI’s development, optimization, and technological evolution.

Similarly, social media platforms are continuously enhancing their ability to gather information from user interactions—searches, swipes, videos watched, time spent on devices, location, purchasing habits, political views, gender, and sexuality, among many other data points—to extrapolate and create user profiles that inform algorithmic content delivery. A comprehensive profile of identity, location, and habits is processed into predictive algorithmic patterns using vast data and comparative analysis. This extensive data collection capacity has raised concerns among privacy advocates and those concerned about the potential for authoritarian control. Various governments worldwide are increasingly leveraging AI capabilities for surveillance and monitoring.

8. Consciousness

One criterion for evaluating AI’s cultural significance involves considerations of consciousness and sentience—two interrelated concepts focused on self-awareness: thinking, experiencing sensations, and differentiating thoughts or perceptions from emotions. These concepts have been debated by philosophers, theologians, and scientists for millennia. Oxford University’s director of Computer Science, Michael Wooldridge, has examined the concept of consciousness in AI extensively: “We don’t have the scientific apparatus to talk about it or be certain it is even real despite common sense and personal experience” (Wooldridge 2020, pp. 211–12). No universally accepted scientific measurement exists for mind, consciousness, or sentience.

Consciousness is conventionally understood as a uniquely human trait, defined broadly as the internal and external self-awareness of experiences, along with a unity of cognition, emotion, and perception that enables volition and agency. The ability to distinguish oneself from the surrounding environment and others and differentiate between actual events and mental occurrences also characterizes consciousness. “Humans cannot conceive of themselves clearly until they have created their image outside themselves” (Guthrie 1993, p. 66). This capacity to distinguish underpins morality, societal values, cultural meaning, and social engagement.

One of the main arguments against machine consciousness was articulated by Hans Moravec, an MIT professor and prominent figure in robotics and machine learning: “Machines have no inner experience to give meaning to their utterances, actions, or internal operations” (Moravec 1999, p. 74). This perspective remains influential, though our understanding has evolved since then. Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra, who has written extensively about the brain, consciousness, AI, and culture, has proposed the concept of the “exocerebrum”—a consciousness that extends outside the brain (Bartra 2024, p. 53) and forms part of a central nervous system (distinct from neural biology) that consists of objects and events and constitutes a broad social and cultural universe and understanding of consciousness.

“The exocerebral circuits form part of the culture and extensive social networks surrounding us, but they can affect how neural circuits function […] Some exocerebral circuits are mechanical prostheses with artificial intelligence, such as computers and smartphones. When intelligent digital and electronic Prostheses connect with the brain, they are transformed into artificial or inorganic parts of our consciousness”.

(Bartra 2024, p. 61)

In the 19th century, biologist Thomas Huxley considered humans conscious automata—creatures in a closed somatic space with thoughts shaped by interaction with the world, with consciousness as a collateral effect (Bartra 2024, p. 4). Others have also been drawn to an expanding concept of consciousness not anchored in a human-centric perspective. Among them, anthropologist Rane Willerslev observes as follows:

Self and world are always, from the onset, inextricably intertwined, and one cannot be without the other. As Heidegger puts it, the self and world belong in a single entity, and the world is not two entities—a subject and an object. Instead, self and earth are in the unity of the structure of being in life, the world.

(Willerslev 2007, p. 21)

Eco philosopher David Abram noted that Indigenous ways of being in the world recognize consciousness as just one form of awareness among many and that individuals could shift their awareness to connect and be receptive to other life forms (Abram 1996, p. 9).

The 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness affirms the likelihood that consciousness is not an exclusively human phenomenon: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing active states” (Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness 2012). The declaration focused on animal consciousness but indicates an evolving cultural understanding that decenters exclusive human claims to consciousness. Science writer Ed Yong has written extensively on the consciousness of animals, noting that sentience involves sorting perceptual experiences that flow from moving in and sensing the world (Yong 2022, p. 328). The subject–object distinction, central to anthropocentrism, becomes less relevant in AI-mediated reality, which processes internal and external information as digital data.

Humanoid social robots, physical embodiments of AI, and humans perceive the world through somewhat analogous processes—information input through sensors/senses processing through computational/cognitive systems generating output. Humans might be viewed as biological prototypes for AI and social robot development. The key difference is that the human database is inherited, recorded, and conveyed through various modalities, such as genetics, language, movement, and sensory input/output weaving a complexity of individual, social, and cultural systems. Humans are born into an encoded biological and cultural system—education, religion, socialization, and culture—which is enlarged upon. As they mature, their capacity for processing data, recognizing patterns, interpreting, and extrapolating from existing information increases. Social robots and AI follow a technologically derived model with significant differences.

The inputs necessary for human information and processing are the five senses: (1) sight, (2) hearing, (3) touch, (4) taste, and (5) smell. Individual sensing technologies exist for each of these; it is theoretically possible to implement and integrate these with sufficient processing power to bring AI into a more comprehensive sensorial relationship with the world. Once all sensory inputs are incorporated, pattern recognition protocols might evolve more holistically, potentially moving closer to what we might recognize as sentience, though many researchers remain skeptical about whether this would constitute consciousness as humans experience it (Boden 2016; Ferdynus 2023). Language processing and reasoning could theoretically coordinate with tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sensors. The ability to reason patterns through observation and sensory processing enriches mapping, anticipation, and projection, a process that parallels how humans navigate, gain knowledge, and perceive the world (Riccio 2024a, p. 19). Some futurists predict that AI might eventually equal or transcend human capabilities, potentially developing its own consciousness, though this remains speculative rather than established science.

The following question emerges: Does AI need to conform to human-defined consciousness, or might it already manifest a form of information processing that constitutes a non-human awareness? Focusing on defining and contrasting machine consciousness using human criteria can be a conceptual constraint. Viewing AI as a separate, mechanical entity in terms of subject–object differentiation—created solely to serve human needs and lacking essential human qualities—may be reductive. Such positioning of AI consciousness as something that could be controlled with a simple on–off switch reflects a perspective that may underestimate the complexity of technological systems as they develop. Public reaction to AI development involves a mixture of fascination, celebration, concern, and skepticism regarding humanity’s technological accomplishments. As the African writer Ngugi wa Thiongʼo remarked in a different context regarding colonization, “It is the final triumph of a system of domination when the dominated start singing its virtues” (wa Thiongʼo 1981, p. 20).

9. Utopia

Technology’s utopian promise and future visions represent the latest iteration of a perfect world, an idea intrinsic to humanity throughout history. Ancient utopic worlds, narratives, and myths abound, among them Japan’s Mahoroba, Buddhism’s Ketumati, the Celtic Mag Mell, the Sumerian Garden of the Gods, Plato’s Republic, Abraham’s Promised Land, Christianity’s Garden of Eden, the Norse Valhalla, the Tibetan Nghe-Beyul Khembalung (Shangri-la), Karl Marx’s Communism, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek future, and Black Panther’s Afrofuturistic Wakanda. Thomas More coined the term “Utopia” in his 16th-century work, describing an ideal island nation with communal property and religious tolerance. Utopia presented an idealized society free from the social ills of 16th-century Europe, offering a critique of contemporary society while providing a hopeful alternative (More [1516] 2021). More’s vision has had a lasting influence and today provides an enduring inspiration and model for utopic visions.

All utopias are shaped in response to their historical moment’s needs, reflecting their culture’s values, hopes, and anxieties—a coping mechanism for mortality and a yearning for a better life. Idyllic religious afterlives, imagined lands of plenty, and philosophical utopias have served as critiques, escapes, and responses to harsh realities. AI-driven technological visions of the future occupy an analogous position in contemporary culture.

Today, our species is undergoing a profound and fundamental shift, moving from nature as the measure of all things to humans as the measure to a technologically measured and mediated reality. Urban living has moved most of the world’s population to cities, environments shaped more by human technology than by nature (United Nations 2018). This disconnect from place-based reality marks a further separation from embodied reality, contributing to the increasing virtualization of terrestrial systems. As philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford presciently observed, we now live within a “mega-machine”—a vast technological and social apparatus that orders our existence (Mumford 1967, p. 12).

Human experience and the world are increasingly mediated and understood through digital technologies. From video conferencing to online banking and shopping, entertainment, information, knowledge, relationships, and experiences are virtual or hybridized corporal–digital events. Biotechnology has reconceptualized our bodies and biological processes as sites of technological intervention, from genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics to brain–computer interfaces (Mullin 2024). The momentum of technological progress and its promise of solutions to global challenges continue to drive this transition because the promise of a better, more efficient world resonates deeply in an era fraught with complexity, anxiety, and uncertainty. People often willingly accept technological mediation in exchange for convenience and stability, echoing age-old hope for utopian promises. The narrative of AI serves as a contemporary manifestation of these age-old human desires and mythological frameworks (Mayor 2018, p. 215).

Just as pre-modern cultures created deities and spiritual systems to explain and interact with the world around them, AI presents a new framework for understanding and structuring reality that sometimes exhibits spiritual, religious, and cult-like characteristics. The cultural phenomenon and public interest in Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, a physical embodiment of AI, illustrates this dynamic:

Like a shaman, priest, imam, or rabbi connecting the spiritual and human worlds, she is a point-of-focus figure who links, explains, and articulates the human-technology relationship, much like how spiritual figures hold, reveal, and reaffirm meaning and create community. Sophia’s success is partly derived from the human instinct to find a tangible anchor to give meaning, reassurance, and guidance. Sophia’s female form suggests comfort and rebirth, and her character, rooted deep within humanity’s cultural memory, offers hope and support, a known in an uncharted sea that portends turbulence.

(Riccio 2024a, p. 81)

Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that AI-optimized technology will bring about a transcendence similar to religious salvation narratives. In The Singularity is Near, he writes that “evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal” (Kurzweil 2005, p. 476). However, it is important to note that this perspective represents one end of a spectrum of viewpoints about AI’s future trajectory, with many researchers maintaining more skeptical positions (Boden 2016).

Some religious concepts that AI narratives may parallel include the following: (1) Creation: The process of developing AI reflects creation myths, where humans assume a creator role, sometimes termed theomorphism.6 (2) Omniscience: The promise of AI to analyze and comprehend vast amounts of data mirrors the all-knowing nature often attributed to many deities. (3) Immortality: The theoretical ability of AI to maintain human consciousness or establish digital afterlives conceptually reflects religious notions of eternal life.

Today, confronted with unprecedented global challenges like climate change, pandemics, and resource scarcity, technology has emerged as an attractive potential solution. Some key attributes include: (1) Abundance through automation: The hopeful belief that AI and robotics will eradicate scarcity and free humans from tedious tasks. (2) Enhanced human capabilities: Aspirations for augmenting humans through biotechnology, brain–computer interfaces, and other emerging disciplines. (3) Global connectivity: A vision for a unified and peaceful world made possible through instant communication and shared virtual environments. (4) Environmental harmony: Imagining a future with clean energy and advanced ecological management to combat climate change and rejuvenate nature. (5) Longevity and health: Pursuing radical life extension and the eradication of diseases through medical advancements.

AI has already led to significant changes which indicate cultural transformation, similar to but different from traditional cultural markers: (1) Information Processing: Advanced computational abilities, pattern recognition, and data analysis. (2) Social Structures: Configurations around technological platforms. Social media has fostered new forms of community, altered the nature of public discourse, and reshaped power dynamics. (3) Reality Construction: Rise in generative AI and the ongoing virtualization of reality have raised questions about the nature of reality, truth, and knowledge. (4) Cultural Production: Resulting in new art forms and methods of production, altering esthetics, and changes in understanding of authenticity, originality, and ownership. (5) Relationships: Technology increasingly mediates human interactions through algorithms. From dating apps to virtual workplaces, AI has changed notions of intimacy, friendship, and professional relationships. (6) Politics: The political landscape has been reshaped by social media, big data analytics, and information warfare. (7) Economics: Technology firms are now among the most powerful economic forces on the planet, using digital tools to advance capitalism, globalization, and expansion. (8) Identity: The increasing influence of technology is reconfiguring conceptions of personhood and individuality.

In today’s complex and uncertain world, people are increasingly seeking meaning, transcendence, and control over their destiny through technology rather than through traditional spiritual, religious, or mythological paths. Numerous parallels exist between ancient longing, mythology, cosmological beliefs, and contemporary AI narratives. These parallels include the following: (1) Order from Chaos: In many ancient creation myths, the universe arose from primordial chaos. Similarly, AI and big data can uncover patterns and meaning from the overwhelming information chaos in our digital age. (2) Transcending Human Limitations: Ancient heroes and gods possessed superhuman abilities; AI similarly augments human capabilities beyond natural limitations. (3) Prophecy and Prediction: Just as ancient oracles claimed to foresee the future, predictive algorithms and AI systems can anticipate potential futures based on data analysis. (4) Immortality and Longevity: Through life extension and innovations like mind uploading, medical technology, gene editing, and cryonics, technology offers secular interpretations of immortality. (5) Creation: Creation myths often illustrate gods breathing life into inanimate matter. AI-optimized synthetic biology theoretically could create new and hybrid forms of life or intelligence. (6) Omniscience: In many traditional belief systems, gods were attributed with all-knowing, all-seeing, and interconnected powers. AI approaches this through digital surveillance, big data analytics, and the increased aggregation of disparate systems. (7) Judgment: Empowered by various technologies, AI now has significant decision-making capabilities in criminal justice, lending, insurance, finance, employment, and military applications. A significant portion of this decision-making occurs within what AI researchers call a “black box”—sophisticated neural networks that process challenges and generate outputs in ways that can be difficult to interpret, leaving even developers with an incomplete understanding of their functionality (Kosinski 2024).

10. Conclusions

Humanity stands at an inflection point, faced with overwhelming and imminent challenges that require an immediate and coordinated response. Our species, which has existed for 300,000 years, has always found the ability to evolve, aware of the serious consequences of inaction. With countless tools and technological resources available, humanity will do what it has always performed: adapt to changing circumstances. The rise in AI has transformed how we understand consciousness, challenging long-held concepts of life and reality, time and space, and the organic and mechanical.

Amid this evolutionary uncertainty, humanity stands at a pivotal moment of cultural reinvention, resulting in changes that will influence life on Earth from here forward. A new kind of technologically mediated culture is emerging, the product of a cascade of events that presents unprecedented opportunities and risks. Will the outcome be a form of enhanced human capability, a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology, or something more disruptive to traditional human primacy? This question remains one of the defining challenges of our time.