"AI" As The Demon God

Back in the 1930s the "technocracy movement" described a world run by "science". The picture below shows a literal promotional vehicle of theirs.

The idea is "science" can dictate "rational" policies, that is, exclude politics and corruption. A scientific dictatorship will "perfectly" allocate resources.

I've seen a number of advocates of this approach give talks in recent years, really since the late 1990's. The idea is a computer control system can model, predict, and control the economy perfectly. A lot of people believe this is feasible for some reason.

The appeal of deleting politics and conflict from daily life is undeniable, but is impossible, obviously. Who implements the "perfect" allocation of resources? A machine? Who maintains the machines? etc... It's just sci-fi. It's not even very well thought out sci-fi. It's just another "god"--the AI demon god.

A weird puritan cult promotes these ideas. It's the "kingdom of heaven" or "New Jerusalem" concept. The cult is chock full of schizoid narcissists who seem to be completely out of touch.