Holy War by AI

In my ongoing exploration of hypotheses that shape our beliefs, moralities, communication, behaviors, and more, I've been keenly aware of how these ideas often become entrenched in our minds, leaving little room for critical thinking. We tend to treat them as unassailable systems beyond our influence, unwittingly surrendering ourselves to their dictates instead of recognizing that we initially put these systems in place to serve our needs. We're told not to question them, and as a result, we end up serving them.

Motivated by this realization, I embarked on a creative endeavor that draws a parallel between one of these hypotheses—religion—and its manipulation by political systems to exert control over our actions. My aim is to establish connections and draw comparisons between the realms of religion and politics, shedding light on their absurdities, impracticalities, and the extreme situations they can force upon us.

To do so, I created a dataset by compiling text from the Quran, Bible, and Torah. Using this dataset, I trained a GPT-2 model. Subsequently, I posed a question to my AI-generated "holy book," inquiring about the concept of war. The responses generated by this AI holy book were then transformed into verses of a poem, which were incorporated into the video project.