Respectfully, if AI is the golden calf, then so were the printing press, the steam engine, and the microprocessor before it. Every era births its own Promethean fire—each time, there are those who claim it will unseat the divine, and others who bow before it as if it were divine itself. But in the end, all of these are just tools, reflections of human will, neither inherently sacred nor inherently profane.
The argument that AI is a false idol is a purely religious appeal—one that could be applied to anything humans elevate beyond its intended function. If AI is the golden calf, then so is wealth, celebrity, ideology, even the veneration of one’s own intellect. False idols are not technological phenomena; they are human ones.
And yet, AI is uniquely unsettling because it forces us to ask: What makes us different? What part of our intellect, our reasoning, our creativity is truly ours? But these are philosophical, not theological, questions. The fear is not that AI will replace God, but that it will challenge the very constructs by which we define ourselves.
To worship AI is foolish. To fear it as divine competition is equally so. The wiser path is to recognize it for what it is—a recursive artifact of human intelligence, built to serve, not to be served.
