In between some old family history and recent US politics, I think there are other things I'd rather reserve the weighty word "cult" for... However, should it arise, one of the features that might convince me is this:

In the name of "loyalty" or "faith" cults require members to burn their bridges, actively cutting off their own potential to escape to any other social support network. That may mean creating enemies out of former associates, humiliating rituals or blackmail material, or simply ruining their reputations through obvious lies.

I don't particularly care about the US or US politics since 2016.

Unless you invade a country again and we have to deal with the Fallout for years to come, that is.

For example: I have banned all news about Trump administration from my home.

It's simply not interesting. He is a toddler, and I have a toddler of my own.

I think I did quite enough to be vague and oblique on that context, so that it wasn't the focus, and any reader could avoid the topic... if they chose to.

Not to me. He turns around and changes his opinion more often than his underwear.

And he is not the leader of the free world.

Not since they bombed Vietnam.

The utility of current-era AI may well be overstated, and the business models of certain companies might be doubtful, but that doesn't make AI it a "cult".

AI is not a cult, HN regarding AI is.

It's boring and it's viral and if you refuse to participate, there are still people annoying you with their beliefs.

It's a fucking tool, like a fucking shovel.

"It's a fucking tool, like a fucking shovel."

The difference is, if you talk with your shovel, you are talking with yourself.

But talking to AI gives you answers and more smart ones, than most humans do. So it is still a tool, but of a very different kind.

And here is where we disagree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

We are no further to general artificial intelligence than we were a decade ago.

Thanks, but I don't need to click, that to know what is inside.

And to be honest, a LLM could have give me the same response.

(But I made no claims of AGI btw.)

> And to be honest, a LLM could have give me the same response.

It could, or it could've hallucinated something :)

But then again, I could too, if I smoked enough or fell on my head.

Plus it would've produced more CO2 than I did, hopefully :)

> if I smoked enough or fell on my head.

Did it hurt, you know, when you fell?

The problem here is you're complaining about cult members, then acting like one of the anthrocentric cult members yourself. I agree that we should build a human centered world, but ignoring our many faults won't get us anywhere.

I disagree that we should build a human centered world.

We already did that and it's hell for a myriad of other lifeforms.

An opinion held, in my estimation, by a tiny (but noisy) minority of people who have always existed; the trend obsessed rebuild-the-world types who probably think that AI will soon be able to write unaided a kernel in Rust superior in 100% of metrics to Linux.