From Sojourners:
In June, Matt Bernico wrote about the “demonic facade” of artificial intelligence, and how the dark temptations of machine learning don’t come from actual possession but rather take the form of exploitation and the waste of our physical, emotional, and spiritual labor.
In Matthew 4:8, Jesus faces the overwhelming temptation to rule “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” as he stands against the devil in the desert. Corporate platforms provide their users with similar temptations, providing access to global information all the time, anywhere, and all at once. Similar to the devil in the story of Jesus’ temptation, platforms demand that we bow down and worship our worst impulses—training their algorithms to center ragebait, trolling, and recurrent controversies while they quietly make off with every bit of revenue they can extract from users.