I'm one of those people. Very happy to associate myself with animism and anthropomorphize animals and machines. I think one of the biggest mistakes with Christianity and the western world is that we see ourselves as something greater than animals and other things.
Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, ...
> I think one of the biggest mistakes [...] we see ourselves as something greater than animals and other things.
That's not the issue. The problem is that we're teaching laypeople that these systems are ahead of where they actually are. This leads to fear, malinvestment, over-regulation, and a whole host of other bad outcomes.
We need to have honest conversations about the capabilities of these systems now and into the future, but the communication channels are being flooded by hypesters, doomsayers, and irrelevant voices.
> Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, ...
> The AI wanted to be one way.
This desire to anthropomorphize LLMs and imbue them with desires is sick.
I'm going to start calling these people animists. They're looking for something that isn't there.