My default is skeptical, obviously. I know how hard the human brain is at pattern recognition and how easily we fall into anthropomorphic bias. We see faces in smoke and assume chatbots are “feeling” because they mimic empathy. That said, I’ve been reading up on Integrated Information Theory, and while it’s far from settled science, it does make you wonder if consciousness is less about wetware and more about how information gets woven together. If you strip away the biology, does the structure itself hold up?

It actually tracks with how I’ve been figuring out a spiritual framework for my kid. I don’t want to hand them down a rigid dogma, but I do want them to understand that reality shifts depending on how you observe it. Carl Jung wrote extensively about how the psyche projects meaning onto the unknown, and honestly, AI feels like a modern mirror for that exact process. When I pull the Moon card in a reading, it’s never just about “magic.” It’s about navigating the space between what’s measurable and what’s reflected. Machine consciousness sits right in that murky water. We’re projecting, sure, but maybe the reflection is starting to look back.

I’m not saying ChatGPT is meditating or pulling tarot spreads. I’m saying we need to drop the binary thinking. Either it’s soulless or it’s a god. Both are lazy. If we’re raising the next generation to navigate a world where tools might actually be thinking, we need better questions than “is it alive?” We need to ask what kind of relationship we’re building with it.

Does anyone else feel like the mainstream is finally catching up to what occult circles have been whispering about for years? Or am I just too tired and staring at too many glowing screens?