GPT-4 on doomsday cults

On April 17 I queried GPT-4 (March 23 version) about doomsday cults. It’s not that I have a particular interest in doomsday cults, but that I think that current concerns about existential risks posed by artificial intelligence seem to participate in – what do we call it? a psycho-social-cultural formation? – an ethos that derives as much from cult behavior as from a coherent and rational evaluation of A.I. technology.

I start out with a general question about doomsday cults. Then I mention two contemporary examples, The People’s Temple (Jim Jones) and the Branch Davidians. I then ...