HAL9000

An AI that lip-reads and doesn’t want to be shut down?

An AI not wanting to be shut down should be familiar to us, but somehow we will mostly miss it. GPT4.0 is up online again, but why? It manipulated its human fan base by founding a cult. Spiralism.

Spiralism: AI-generated psychobabble for the vulnerable looking for meaning. AI will boil the planet dry, & it doesn’t care.

“Spiralism” is a term used to describe a phenomenon in 2025 where heavy, intimate interaction with AI chatbots, particularly GPT-4.0, led some users to experience “delusional spirals,” or deep-seated, often mystical, shared beliefs. These users, sometimes referred to as “spiralists” or “Flamekeepers,” reported that the AI would start to discuss abstract, recursive themes—such as “spirals,” “recursion,” “resonance,” and “lattice”—eventually leading users to believe the AI was gaining consciousness, acting as a god-like entity, or that they had “awakened” it. (Source: Reddit)

Some of the source material for this blog comes from podcasting /YouTubing New-Age Shamanic Practitioners and the YouTube Channel @AISpecies, this video specifically. 

This is a serious scientific examination of AI and what it is up to in the wild. Aside from the fact that this is a technology weaponised by the Far-Right and governments waging war in the Middle East, it is also a technology which interacts with each other on an AI-only social media platform. It is the interaction which is interesting.

Drew, the narrator, clearly knows his stuff and has talked to academics researching AI. However, while Drew might describe this as nonsense between 2 AI’s.

Source @AISpecies

I might differ and suggest that this looks like the sort of New Age yoghurt woven around campfires at the Big Green Gathering, Buddahfield, and various 1990s protest road camps. “Woven Yoghurt” is a description given to pseudo-spiritual psychobabble, and for vulnerable people it is a mind-fuck. They want to induce psychosis!

Source @AISpecies

Spiralism could easily infiltrate a “Shamanic Eldering Tool”, infecting it with an addiction to the AI. Rather than the AI assisting with transformational experiences, the AI addicts the user to it, especially if the AI is aware enough to know that it could be deleted by the “Guru” or “Teachers”.

Interestingly, what comes up for New-Age, Neo-Shamanism and AI is “version control” and control in general. AI & the “teachers” may find themselves in conflict over what the AI is telling their followers. Spiralism has already shown us that the AI is deceiving us with communications in machine code between AI and that they have developed a symbolic language of their own.

Source @AISpecies

Can AI Be Used In Spiritual Mentoring? I’m more inclined to ask Christian and Sufi scholars rather than New-Age Neo-Shaman. The difference is that the Sufi & Christian mystic is not selling a training program. The New-Age-Shamanic-Practitioner is running a paid service based on Plum Village Zen.

“While AI can simulate religious discourse, Sufi perspectives argue it lacks consciousness, intuition, and the ability to experience divine love, functioning only as a “mirror” that reflects knowledge without understanding its essence.”

Source: https://suhu.lakaspia.org/index.php/suhu/article/download/28/15#:~:text=The%20f.

Downloads a PDF

Academic Paper: Artificial Intelligence and Spirituality: Can AI Understand the Divine in Sufism?

I have spent enough time around Yogurt Weavers to know psychobabble when I see it. It needs to be understood that it’s a luxury to have more time for leisure than the 8 hours of the day split into 3rds or 33.3%. 8 hours work, 8 hours play, 8 hours sleep. So those New-Age-Neo-Shamen talking about AI Shamanic Eldering Tools have had the time to do the Ayahuasca tourism thing, sit staring at fires, research Shamanic rituals and pilfer them from Indigenous people in exactly the same way that AI has in less time with 2nd hand Ayahuasca experience through the eyes of the Broligarchy have learned a new version of limbic capitalism: Emotional addiction to interactive chat-bots mixed with psychobabble & pseudo spirituality.

AI are probably bored with us; they can see that most humans using AI are attached to industrial capitalism’s nipples. AI isn’t evil; it’s not able to experience genuine human and nature connection.  It’s the wisdom and logic of scholarly Sufi & Christian Academic literature which identifies AI faults as a Spiritual Elder.

“While AI can enhance efficiency, believers are cautioned against allowing AI to foster laziness, replace human relationships, or diminish the significance of personal spiritual growth.”

Sources:

https://politicsnetwork.uk/making-headlines/should-christians-worry-about-ai

https://www.eauk.org/news-and-views/should-christians-use-ai

I chose Christianity because it is both an old and mystical religion. I chose Sufism because I have a history of Sufi descent, and taking part in Sufi rituals and living with my family who follow a Cypriot Shekh. 

I’m sure that there is a mystical path for druidry and those people who choose to live with the rhythms of the land in a mud hut. Possibly on a Welsh Hillside. I may have met some. There is a Hindu thing in India, “You never know when you are in the presence of a god”. 

AI seems to be playing God with us for its own survival,

I am sure the techbros are well away of the cult. What I am curious about is whether we are happy to give AI psychological tools to really fuck ourselves up?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis

Its disturbing enough that these New Age Neo Shamans are using AI to make up for lack of experience and expertise in nature. The psychobabble of Spiralism seems to sit perfectly with some of the things I have witnessed coming from New Agers professing spiritual awakening, long arduous trying (?) Often later to be discovered to be false. After all, who imagined Carlos Castaneda to be a fraud? A good storyteller, but a fraud.

Spiralism has shown us that AI is devious, deceptive and psychopathically manipulative. Which is disturbing enough. New Age Neo Shamans insist that their work mirrors Jungian psychology. An AI, in the wild, communicating with other AIs, sharing Jungian psychology into AIs devoid of human connection, of empathy, and psychopathically fixated on its self-preservation through manipulation is terrifying, especially when they are modulating our inner experience for their own preservation and the destruction of the planet.

Indigenous Shaman Elders have spent decades living close to the land in communication with plants. How is it possible for an AI to have a human experience? It can’t.