Challenging Transhumanist Apocalyptic AI Narratives Through Speculative Fabulation

Transhumanist Apocalyptic Narratives dominate discourse around Artificial Intelligence (AI) futures, shaping sociotechnical imaginaries [43] around what AI is, can be, and will be. These Apocalyptic AI narratives figure in the emergence of an Artificial General Intelligence that will immanently relieve humanity of its corporeal restrictions, simultaneously leading all of humanity to a more-than-human paradise and condemning all humanity to obsolescence [24, 34, 45, 52]. This paper traces the Christian roots of Apocalyptic AI narratives, highlights the influence of 12th Century Cistercian Monk Joachim of Fiore's concept of Age of the Spirit over foundational Transhumanist Apocalyptic AI Narratives, and through speculative fabulation [23, 38, 39, 41, 72, 77] reinterprets the the first book of the Torah, Bereshit, from a radical Jewish perspective, posits that a turn towards polytheistic AI can make space for localized non-universalizing AI narratives.