AI analogies and historical lessons

Thought-provoking post Sam Schillace! This discomfort might be more pronounced with AI as compared to Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Freud mentioned the three humiliations that challenged the belief in human exceptionalism — we aren't the center of the universe (Copernicus), we aren’t a special creation (Darwin), and we don’t fully control our minds (Freud).  Belief in exceptionalism was a byproduct of religion and these beliefs had to be updated. Each discovery shrank the role of God - from creator and manager (who kept track of every act to punish or reward) to someone who kickstarted things but kept away from day-to-day operations, to maybe not even existing. Darwin himself went from being a Christian to being a Deist and finally an agnostic.  But AI could bring us back full circle. Although AI is currently a useful tool that we mostly understand, as it becomes more advanced, we may not be able to make sense of it at all. And as AI becomes hyper-personalized, we might have only a vague understanding that our actions impact the results we see. I'm not sure how it would feel to live in a world where we don't understand how things work, except that there's a pervasive higher power that controls things.