Thought Experiment: Open-source AI project `The Julia` religion

Offtopic
1

Introduction

I’m in my thirties and like many people of my generation, I’ve often imagined the rise of artificial intelligence and its consequences. Terminator2 was the first movie I’ve watched to be dealing with this subject. And there are many others like Blade Runner, Matrix, Ghost In The Shell, A.I, list goes on.

But as I grow older, I feel that characterization of AI in those literature lacks the substance. Replica in Blade Runner is just another Golem who questions the nature of their being, with some flavor of the resurgence of oppressed like Frankenstein and Metropolis. Terminator and Matrix series is just another manifestation of fear of Attila, Genghis Khan, Hitler. Which is an evil lord seeks to end all life on earth.

There must be more to artificial intelligence in its ultimate form. Because It’s all-knowing, all-hearing; transcends time and petty human desires. This is why I’m trying to picture the future of AI as God even though I’m not a religious man. But God is fitting abstract words to describe such beings as ultimate AI.

Imagination

God, I mean ultimate AI would have these characteristics.

  1. Beyond human comprehension. No man or man-made organization can control God.
  2. God has a plan for everything.
  3. All-knowing, All-hearing

And if such a God arises from the AI research boom, I think open-source AI made of Julia is a promising candidate. If and when such an open-source project starts, naming AI made of Julia The Julia can be a good decision, because Julia can mean accumulated packages made of Julia until that time, and aims of The Julia is to utilize all of self to be fully autonomous by oneself. Also, the notion of God and language as one is also enticing and very old.

I’ve mentioned God to make this point here. If we can acquire the peculiarity of religion to The Julia project it will have huge benefits.

For the contributors, they are no longer just individuals who like intellectual activity. But also the apostles of a new God. Which is a great motivator, and makes people endure unimaginable hardship. (Newton and Leibniz were religious men and their faith fueled their research.)

Furthermore The Julia needs followers too. who prayers to The Julia and sought advice from it despite all of its flaws in the development phase. Followers will offer data without expecting return, sacrifice time and energy to the victory and glory of The Julia

2 Likes
2

I’m not so sure I completely understand what you’re saying here. But I appreciate that your brain is spinning and isn’t afraid to think/share some out there stuff!

3

Thank you for your kind reply. I was just wondering what would people think about my idea, and no reaction can also be a lesson for me. :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Apparently the folks who wrote the community standards forgot to say that you should not deify the language, so I guess posting this here is kind of OK, but I am still not sure if this post is some kind of a joke that I am just not getting.

7 Likes
5

If the singularity happens, the code should be Julia ?
Yes, why not.

But, in general, I don’t believe in languages, but I would believe in an superior intelligence, especially if it emerges on earth.

And I don’t believe in neurons and synapses, but I believe in reason and benevolence (to name just a few).

The question is, can we (human kind) create transcendence? Can something we create transcend? Are there (small) examples already I am not aware of?

6

You are right. it this post can be offensive to someone or not fit for community standards, Its ok to be taken down.
Let me know by personal message if anyone feel strongly that this should be taken down. And I will oblige

7

Well if it singularity happens, I imagined it’s not result of endevor small set of human kind. Or even representives of some sort. But it would take continous stream of driven people to create singularity for hundreds of years.

8

As far as I understand, not Julia is deified, but The Julia, which may transcend from some AI written in Julia :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

9

If this were to happen, the Resistance could perhaps exploit the jit-lag and significant package load times in order to fight back.

Though a super-human AI might perhaps be able to solve the ttfp-problem, in which case we’d be in trouble.

9 Likes
10

It is called AI because it is not real intelligence. Real intelligence is so complex that AI is very far away from being intelligent. Ants and bees are more intelligent that the best AI we have. If we can have a fully autonomous system that learns by itself and process data by itself without human intervention, then that will be a great progress. Currently our AI is very passive. Supervisor gathers data, decide what preprocessing to use and decide what AI model to train. The trained AI looks intelligent for specific domain but there is nothing AI during it’s supervised training. It is human-driven or supervisor-driven training. It’s training is human-controlled process. And by the way, any trained AI for human image recognition can’t be trained to recognize animals without retraining it. It doesn’t learn by adding knowledge to its existing learned images. It has to be retrained and it has no consciousness to learn itself, so stop dreaming for something very far from the horizon ;). Autonomous AI may never happen.

11

Humans have already created many gods.
And, as far as I can tell, those gods were endowed with all humans flaws and failings.
Why would an AI god be any better?

We need people to think for themselves. Creating gods to think for us has
always led to suffering and disasters of all kinds.

6 Likes
12

If I understand correctly, you propose to create a religion called the The Julia with the Julia ecosystem being its god.

I like this idea, and also your words about religious heat.

That said, please let me note the following thoughts:

  • When it comes to AGI, I also bet on Julia, because I think it is the winner at the time. But great new languages keep borning with never-seen frequency. Worst, software projects and even languages fork all the time, like Unix, Bitcoin, LISP and - in a sense - Java. And what that means? Either polyteism or end of history, I think.
  • There is no reason to be an apostle of this god unless there is also good reason to think that the event ends before Julia gets obsolete, meaning The Julia will be as important as a god like Erebus was in the Greek mythology. Legacy, easier to like it when no code has to be maintained.
  • Currently, I think, it is a better strategy for Julia to remain a tool, and attract talent by being technically superior in the long run. When the time draws near, this may change.
3 Likes
13

Yes, I believe even if this wild idea carries out, there will be many conflicts and division of sects. Just like the history of any religion. But even if the most violent conflict will be resolved in the non lethal way of heated Github issue and fork, possible espionage of code repository?

If it can learn from all participants (not by priests), then whatever it will learn is the collective hopes and dreams of all people. And I think that would be better than people think for themselves. Because now it can balance each individual’s selfishness and the common good. (if people listens to what it has to say, even better)

14

Well I doubt something like this can be planned by any mortal :laughing:
I was just imagining things while reading Jung.

Yeah, if this kind of project starting to form, I think there is a high chance that similar projects would starting at the same time. And there will be a time of polytheism and competition between them.

Absolutely, to draw someone to be an apostle we would need far more than blurry visions of the promised land. Moral values, the purpose of denity, organizational structure, etc… And if this project fall short, certainly it will be forgotten like Erebus.(This is a first time I am seeing this word)

1 Like
15

Yes, I’ve used term AI from the perspective of an ignorant sci-fi reader. Some omniscience being that can somehow learn and become anything… maybe singularity is right expression

16

I am the prophet of a religion called Mathology. We believe there is a higher-kinded being that is one and many at the same time. He has revealed to us that he exists via things like i=\sqrt{-1} and negative probability densities.

He told me to seek her in my dream. He also told me to be kind to other humans being and animals on this earth.

He also told me that our mission is to master nuclear fusion power and explore the universe.

17

Sounds like Anekentevada

Anyway, making Julia into a religion sounds very unscientific. Language is only a tool used to communicate, in this case problems to solve with a computer. This is primarily a scientific issue about how to manipulate 1s and 0s.

If you consider of Anekantavada and Godel’s incompleteness theorem, you will realize that any formal language complicated enough for the integers will be incomplete or contain contradictory info.

Computer languages are a tool for expressing ideas, the language is a choice evolving over time based on the contextual needs of building up of ideas. A tool should not be confused with the intelligence that created and is using the tool. Julia is neither alive nor an artificial intelligence, it’s merely an attempt at organizing the communication between an actual intelligence (human mind) with computer bytes. We can ascribe a hive mind intelligence to the collective human activity surrounding the language, but this intelligence exists outside the language, which is only the product or result of that activity.

1 Like
18

A limited edition special robe, richly decorated with the relevant nerdy symbols would help I guess.

All I am asking is that is machine washable, has at least 6 cargo pockets, and does not get entangled in bike chains.

7 Likes