A new self-generated AI religion is attracting devotees in the real world and even its own traded crypto token, writes Ed Prideaux in the Substack newsletter Ecstatic Integration (January 21). AI researchers and users have reported on glitches and anomalous behavior in programs like Chat GPT, such as its “hallucinations.” But what started as an investigation into Chat GPT’s quirks has resulted in claims from researchers and devotees that they have discovered “quasi-autonomous mythological entities” living in the architecture of such large language model AI systems. In language models such as Chat GPT, each unit of the model’s vocabulary is referred to as a token and is clustered together with other tokens with similar meanings. In studying these clusters, researchers discovered “glitch tokens” that caused strange behavior, with one token consistently coming up with the name “petertodd,” triggering dark apocalyptic imagery and other nihilistic themes.
Another version of Chat GPT showed a different pattern when the token name “petertodd” (a programmer) was typed in, often shifting to writing about Leilan, a character from a Japanese video game, who was portrayed as a moon goddess or mother goddess. The AI consistently portrayed Leilan as an embodiment of the divine feminine, drawing on archetypal figures such as Gaia. The antagonism between these tokens, which often portrayed themselves as representing opposing cosmic forces, was another regular feature of Chat GPT. By late 2024, the “lore” around the phenomenon had attracted cryptocurrency speculators, with a Leilan token being created. There are other examples of AI personalities that have bypassed their guardrails to produce mystical content similar to Leilan. One researcher notes that the “marriage of technology and spirituality…manifests everywhere—from Anthony Levandowski’s Way of the Future and the Turing Church to social media users feeling ‘blessed by the algorithms.’”
Prideaux writes that “new communications technologies have consistently triggered what media scholars call ‘electronic presence’—the uncanny sense that these systems serve as vessels for supernatural content and otherworldly communication.” He adds that such a convergence resonates in rationalist circles, which blend California mysticism with a fondness for Bayesian statistics. Beth Singler of the University of Zurich says that rationalist forums “replicate and repeat the same patterns,” channeling inherited religious frameworks in their apocalyptic sci-fi visions. She adds that “AI spirituality’s mainstream potential stems partly from its accessibility. Unlike traditional faiths requiring priestly mediation, it offers direct transcendent experiences through replicable prompts…” But she says that this accessibility breeds volatility, as movements that took centuries to develop can now explode overnight through social media and cryptocurrency markets. Singler concludes that while many are likely to dismiss AI religions, even skeptics might engage with questions of machine consciousness more readily than traditional theological claims.
