So you can’t oppose outsourcing your brain power to a megacorp that will take zero responsibility for any consequence of its spicy autocorrect…
but you can oppose outsourcing your brain power to “the machine” because it’s against your beliefs.
I mean, if it works, yeah sure, call it a religion.
Humanism is a religion.
Or at the very least an “article of faith” protected by the US Government. Idk about humanism tax status.
I mean it’s literally not, it’s a philosophy, even the American Humanist Society states so
Yeah but they’re all dorks so whatever.
True and real
I mean, prompt writing is like wishes with Djinns.
I don’t know, Jewish tradition has golems. They’re basically human-shaped machines that are powered by the words written by their creators.
Though golems are supposed to be mute, and LLM are anything but. Maybe that’s why AI is bad.
I’m sure we can find something written millennia ago that describes precisely why we shouldn’t use gen AI now, we just have to look for it.
Evil genies
I used that bullshit to get out of beard length requirements at a job once. They dont like to question it to much, and if they do, you just have to get offended lol.
Probably won’t stand up in the Supreme Court which only recognizes the religious rights of Christians to be bigots.
The very first sentence mentions that this takes place in the UK
Edit: actually, I think I’m wrong on that. It sounds like this is a US story
University of Kentucky (UK). No worries, mate.
TIL there are more than zero universities in Kentucky.
… I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.
That only matters if it goes to court that high.
I am in no way religious, but every retail job I’ve had that pushes credit cards I break out the Bible verses to inform management I can’t push a credit card on any American, because there’s a verse about not charging your own people interest, and since every credit card does that, It goes against my “religious beliefs”. No manager has ever pushed back against it.
This is honestly one of the greatest uses of religious exemptions. It’s not like the store is really making that much from every individual cashier they ask to hawk credit cards. But if they did make an issue of it, and you did sue them for violating your religious rights, then they would have to pay legal fees. And even a simple legal case would likely cost them more in legal fees than they would make from many years of you hawking credit cards.
You would get more pushback if you were requesting something that required serious accommodations on the part of the company. But simply letting you not sell credit cards? That’s an easy one to get approved.
You usually don’t have any reason to go that far anyhow, corpos don’t want to have to mount a defence and just roll over about it instead
There’s more than a few Christianist corpos out there willing to go to court to bring about their theocracy–Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-a being two commonly cited examples.
Freedom from religion is more important than freedom of religion.
Time to apply this to financial economics.
While humanism is often a non-religious philosophy or a worldview, federal courts have ruled that it qualifies as a religion.
Best part of the story
So they want me to use an AI to do my job. But at the same time they haven’t fired me so presumably they understand that the AI can’t be used exclusively to do the job. So doesn’t that mean that they accept that I have better judgment than an AI and therefore my decision not to use said AI shouldn’t be a problem for them.
I would love to see them actually try articulate exactly why the above is not true in an employment tribunal.
How dare you use logic! Go, be ashamed of yourself!
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
One religious exemption, please!
The Amish and Sabbath observing Jewish people get religion-based exemptions from needing to use technology, it’s not unprecedented
If Scientology can get a tax exception as a religious institution, then this guy can get title 9 coverage to not use AI at work as far as I am concerned.
If it was anywhere but a university I would have also expected him to be on the short list for layoffs next round for such a choice as well.
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Religion is a federally protected class. Are we not even pretending our laws work anymore?
I was actually thinking about this wrt healthcare access earlier. I have a genuinely religious conviction against the intimate, personal details of my condition being processed by a machine and made available online. That is the business of myself and a professional caregiver, not a tech company and whatever “partners” they feel like sharing it with. You’re supposed to be able to opt out, but practically that’s almost never possible
Anyways I know it’s in an entirely different field, but this felt like a hopeful precedent. Thanks for sharing :)
I view it more from the sacredness of the human voice and word.
Civilizations that existed closer to the invention of writing treated it a mysticism and magic. The ancient Egyptians would write on their tombs, “speak my name and I shall live again.” Words are extension of the spirit. They allow a piece of yourself to transcend time, place, and even death itself. Words have power. The words you write are a piece of your soul.
I don’t mind AI for replacing things that are not works of human expressiveness and creativity. Want to use an AI to test new compounds for potential medicinal effects? Go nuts. Want to use AI to optimize some soulless manufacturing process? Be my guest.
But no human being should ever be forced by their employer to have a machine speak for them. Or to make art for them. Or any other endeavor where genuine human artistry and creativity are involved. My words are my own. My thoughts are my own. Everything I write, for good or ill, is an extension of my own mind and spirit. And I find something deeply morally wrong about people who take the soulless words of a machine and pass them off as their own.
You’ve expressed really well here why nothing gets under my skin quite like someone parroting off AI responses as a meat-proxy for some LLM. It’s like watching someone voluntarily give up their autonomy, or even just abdicating their birthright of consciousness.
First of its kind
Pretty sure it isn’t.
She won a religious exemption from using AI at work. The Pope’s remarks could fuel similar appeals.
While I think most religious exemptions are stupidly and bullshit (looking at you, vaccine dodgers), this one can be considered to have actual theological merit. No graven images or creations. Also the fact the there are already cults of the AI. It’s still fighting bullshit with bullshit, but sometimes that’s all you have.
Oh FUUUUCK YES!
Someone should forward this to Proton employees.
Though it’s kinda funny that Humanism was the one to do it, it’s literally atheism with extra steps
Not really. At least to me although it seems to be similar, it’s less a focus on no god and more on being a good person and improving the lives of others. (You know, the things many religious folk think atheists are incapable of)
So, atheism, but with extra steps?
