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47-year-old tech CEO Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions on efforts to live forever, is starting his own religion based on his beliefs. It’s called “Don’t Die.”
Back in March, Bryan Johnson posted a message to X (Twitter), which read, “Dear humanity, I am building a religion. Wait a second, I know what you’re going to say. Hold that knee-jerk reaction and let me explain.
“First, here’s what’s going to happen: Don’t Die becomes history’s fastest-growing ideology. It saves the human race. And ushers in an existence more spectacular than we can imagine. It is inevitable. The only question is: will you be an early or late adopter?”
Johnson followed that message up with another one, which read, “Why is it inevitable? Four fundamental shifts are happening right now: 1) We are giving birth to superintelligence (AI). 2) No existing ideology solves AI alignment. 3) With AI, our species’ survival is not guaranteed. 4) With AI, individual biological death is no longer inevitable. We are at risk of extinction without a unifying framework to solve human alignment and AI alignment.”
12 messages later, he concluded, “When the 25th century looks back at this moment, they will admire and respect those of us who could overcome the noise and see clearly in the moment.”
This week, Jessica Hamzelou of MIT Technology Review published the results of an interview she did with Bryan Johnson to discuss his new religion.
During their conversation, Johnson was asked how he will ensure that AI models prioritize and protect human life? He replied, “I’m talking to a lot of AI researchers about this. Communities of AIs could be instilled with values of conflict resolution that do not end in the death of a human. Or an AI. Or the planet.”
Bryan Johnson also explained, sort of, how his new Don’t Die religion will work.
“We’re playing with the idea that the body is God,” he said. “We’ve been experimenting with this format of a Don’t Die fam, where eight to 12 people get together on a weekly basis. It’s patterned off of other groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. We structure an opening ritual. We have a mantra. And then there’s a part where people apologize to their body for something they’ve done that has inflicted harm upon themselves.”
He also hints, but doesn’t come right out and say that AI will also serve as people’s God.
“AI is going to be omnipresent,” he said. “And this is why we’ve been contemplating ‘the body is God.’ Over the past couple of years … I’ve been testing the hypothesis that if I get a whole bunch of data about my body, and I give it to an algorithm, and feed that algorithm updates with scientific evidence, then it would eventually do a better job than a doctor. So I gave myself over to an algorithm.
“It really is in my best interest to let it tell me what to eat, tell me when to sleep and exercise, because it would do a better job of making me happy. Instead of my mind haphazardly deciding what it wants to eat based on how it feels in the moment, the body is elevated to a position of authority. AI is going to be omnipresent and built into our everyday activities. Just like it autocompletes our texts, it will be able to autocomplete our thoughts.”
Content shared from brobible.com.