Why the tech gods of Silicon Valley have turned to Christianity

Existential questions arising from the race to develop “God-like” artificial intelligence are driving a revival of interest in Christianity in Silicon Valley.

Churches in San Francisco are reporting swelling congregations and collectives have started in the past year to connect tech workers committed to or curious about Christian faith.

Denise Lee Yohn, co-founder of the Bay Area Center for Faith, Work & Tech, which was founded about a year ago and has about 2,000 people on its mailing list, said the increased interest in Christianity had been prompted “in large part” by the questions raised by the development and use of AI.

“I think that people are asking themselves and each other: What does it mean to be human, if we can be gods? Should we be gods?” she said.

Curiosity has also been piqued by some influential entrepreneurs choosing to discuss their faith openly. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, will draw on his Christianity when he gives a sold-out series of lectures starting next month on the biblical Antichrist.

The talks have been organised by a collective known as Acts 17 Collective — “Acts” standing for “Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society”. The nonprofit group was founded last year by Michelle Stephens, a healthcare start-up executive and the wife of Trae Stephens, a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund who is also co-founder of Anduril Industries, which makes and sells autonomous weapons systems for military use.

Recent speakers at the collective have included Pat Gelsinger, former chief executive of the US chipmaker Intel, who discussed the role of faith in his leadership. Garry Tan, chief executive of the start-up accelerator Y Combinator, is also a supporter.

Thiel’s theology has drawn some scepticism, given that it aligns with his business interests. The Founders Fund manifesto states that “entrepreneurs who make it have a near-messianic attitude”.

In recent interviews musing on the Antichrist, he has warned against the emergence of an individual or system that could exploit fears of global catastrophe driven by AI to enforce a “one-world totalitarian state” that undermines human freedom.

In an argument against over-regulation of the technologies in which he is heavily invested, he told The New York Times that existential risks were “all framed in this sort of runaway dystopian science text”. He said he feared the political solution to AI risks would be a push for a “one-world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke, to make sure people don’t programme a dangerous AI”.

Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and author of Tech Agnostic, said the grandiosity of the claims made about the still largely unproven powers of AI had become so intense that, “rather than be ridiculed”, tech leaders can say “this is actually all backed up, not necessarily by science, but by that other very influential institution in human history: religion, which is a way in which people have long made spectacular claims without a lot of evidence.”

Still, tech workers are increasingly congregating to discuss Christianity, whether to be closer to God, or Thiel, or both.

The congregation at Epic Church in downtown San Francisco, which hosts some of Acts 17 Collective’s events, has grown since the pandemic from 300 to more than 800.

Yohn said she was hearing tech workers at Faith, Work & Tech events seeking to discuss ethical questions, such as the potential for AI to displace lots of workers, including themselves, and the boundaries for using AI to predict health and disease.

She said Thiel had helped to “normalise” Christianity in the area, where some Christians might previously have felt they were seen as backwards because of their faith.

“It’s no secret that this region has been historically quite hostile to the Christian faith, in the sense that I think there’s always been some interest in spirituality and maybe more influence of eastern religions here,” Yohn said. “But in the past, I think that Christianity has been looked down upon by many people in this region.

“And so to have some very prominent, influential, very well-respected people identify as Christians and explain why they take seriously the claims of Jesus, and why they want to follow him, I think it kind of prompts them to wonder, well, maybe this is something that I should look into also.”