Michigan Pagan College Scholarship

College Money for Witches and Earth Children

What Being a Pagan Means to Me

When I was a child, I loved stories that came from mythology. I was enchanted by the tales of Hercules fighting the Hydra, Anubis leading people to the underworld, and even Noah herding animals onto the Ark. These stories inspired me and sparked a lifelong passion for creativity and storytelling. However, I would eventually discover that not everyone shared the passion and understanding of mythology that I had.
At that age I would often be left alone with my grandparents, and they would babysit me while my parents were away. One day, I was alone with my grandmother, and I tried to share the stories I had learned with her. I told her that there was a myriad of gods and goddesses. She responded that the god of Christianity was the only true god. This baffled me. My mom had previously entertained me with stories of gods and goddesses like Osiris and Persephone, and I certainly did not think these stories were untrue, as my grandmother would like me to believe. I did not believe they were true in the sense that they all happened historically. I believed they were true in the sense that all stories are made to be true when told for the first time. To hear my grandmother deny such a basic fact was shocking to me, even before I knew of the insidiousness within such a sentiment.

Growing up in a Pagan household taught me acceptance. When I was in elementary school, my parents would gather for rituals with their coven. This was a very diverse coven, and through interactions with them I was able to learn about different cultures at a very young age. While Christian children at my school were telling me that homosexuality was a sin, I was able to meet and interact with gay and trans Pagans in my home. These experiences were vital to me as a young white boy who spends a lot of time on a computer. There were countless videos on the internet created specifically to convince lonely kids like me that women, gay people, and racial minorities were the cause of all our problems. They could have had a substantial effect on me in the long term if I had not had acceptance ingrained into me through my experiences among Paganism. This value continues to guide my life to this day, and in a very personal matter.
Despite being raised in a Pagan environment, I also grew up in a very Conservative Christian society. As a result, growing up I often had the worry that my actions were sinful. I was incredibly anxious and would often worry about my own moral purity. This is something I have been learning to grow past, but it puts into perspective how important the beliefs I learned from Paganism have been to my life. I was not raised with Christian values, and my parents would never condition me to feel guilty or afraid, yet I still grew up with that moral anxiety. If I had grown up in a puritanical Christian household, or I was not taught the value of acceptance, I can almost say for certain these issues would have been much worse. It took me nineteen years of life to discover my bisexuality. If I was taught that such aspects of one’s character were sinful, I am unsure if I would ever discover that aspect of myself. In this way, my experiences with Paganism continue to benefit me, and keep me an accepting person to others and myself.

The Myth of Artificial General Intelligence’ s Inevitability

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic which is subject to a lot of misinformation from those inside and outside of its professional context. One of the greatest acts of misdirection from the AI industry comes from its use of the word “intelligence.” The AI models that currently exist, such as ChatGPT, Alexa, and self-driving cars, do not have anything close to what we would consider human intelligence, and would be classified as artificial narrow intelligence (ANI). However, there is a theoretical type of AI called artificial general intelligence (AGI) which would be truly intelligent and have superhuman capabilities, including the ability to interact with humans, interpret language, and learn on its own (Faraboschi et al, 94-95). AGI is more of a vague concept without a formal definition, and the consensus is inconsistent as to whether true consciousness must be achieved to reach AGI (McLean et al, 660). This vagueness has aided the AI industry in creating the narrative that AGI is an inevitable part of the future, and every improvement in AI gets us closer to AGI. Our current AI models are not fit to expand to AGI, attempting to do so would lead to high amounts of inaccurate data, and the only reason AI leaders spread the idea that AGI is inevitable is because it creates a sense of urgency around its development.
br> AI would need to work very differently from how it works now for AGI to exist. While modern day AI models may appear to think on their own, the most advanced AI models currently use a large database of hyperparameters, which are date the AI can analyze to determine how it is meant to act. It uses these hyperparameters to predict whatever the result of a certain input should be (Hunter et al, 5, 9). For example, a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT could take an unfinished input like “Have a nice” and correctly predict that the most likely word to complete this sentence is “day.” In this way, the AI is not intelligent in the way humans are, but rather very good at conforming to a set of standards it was given. Computer scientist Yann LeCun has claimed that AI models have hardly come close to being able to interact with the world in a human way, something that would be vital to AGI (Musiol). Every new breakthrough in AI generated video, image or text seems only to improve AI’s ability to create predictions or increase the capacity in which AI can access data. There is no amount of fine-tuning ANI that will lead to the existence of AGI, and unless a company comes up with a plan to truly innovate AI, AGI’s existence cannot be taken as a given.

AI 2027 is a work of fiction which presents itself as a prediction of the future of AI, arguing that AGI will be reached by the Fall of 2027. Its writers claim that ANI will eventually be able to train on its own data, and in doing so it will exponentially grow in knowledge. At this point, the AI would learn so fast that any improvements to the AI made by humans would be negligible. At this point, the AI would be classified as AGI (Kokotajlo et al). The problem with this argument is that we have tested AI’s ability to learn from itself, and it has not been able to create its own knowledge. One of the major problems with ANI is called “hallucinations.” AI can only make predictions, meaning it cannot verify information. If you were to ask an LLM for the result of two plus two, it would respond that the value is four, because many of its hyperparameters would make the same claim. However, if you were to ask an LLM for the result of a more complex equation which does not appear in any of its sources, it would output a nonsensical result, as it is only trained to predict language and cannot accurately perform mathematical equations. In a similar manner, AI can often create hallucinations of facts or events, as it does not have the capability to think on its own. A 2025 study demonstrated that AI is inconsistent when it comes to interpreting text such as literature in an accurate manner (Adel and Alani, 6808). These flaws are a limitation of ANI, and if the idea for AGI shared in AI 2027 was attempted, AI would be generating flawed date for itself and training on said flawed data, increasing the likelihood of it generating more hallucinations. This has already been shown to be an issue, as AI that trains off of data from the internet has experienced difficulties as the internet becomes filled with more AI generated content, leading to the degeneration of the AI’s hyperparameters (Bhatia).

Despite the lack of evidence, leading AI companies still present AGI as if it is the inevitable outcome of their continued work and research. OpenAI, the creators of generative AI models such as ChatGPT, present themselves as if they are consistently getting closer to achieving AGI, even though their work has not evolved beyond predictive ANI models (OpenAI). The CEO of Google DeepMind has gone so far as to claim that AGI is only a few years away (Musiol). These bold statements have been taking advantage of the lack of AI knowledge among the general public. By spreading the idea that one’s company will imminently create AGI, AI leaders are pressuring investors and other companies into supporting the continuing development of AI as to not be left behind. A thought experiment in the AI industry called Roko’s Basilisk takes this pressure a step further. It posits that if an AGI were to be created, it would need to do anything it can to ensure its own creation. Because of this, the theory states that once AGI is created, it will retroactively punish anyone who did not actively aid its creation (Singler, 280). This is an extreme but notable example of how fearmongering is pervasive among AI proponents, and the spreading idea that AGI is inevitable only serves to benefit AI companies.

AGI may exist at some point in the future, but it is dangerous to treat it as if it is an inevitable invention. AGI would have to be far more complex than predictive ANI systems, and the AI industry has not been innovating those systems. Experiments involving ANI systems training upon their own data have shown to cause accelerated hallucinations. Ultimately, the AI industry has pretended they are very close to discovering AGI to maintain their own financial success. AI leaders often claim that AGI will benefit humanity, but the fact that they have no plan to create AGI shows that they are acting in dishonesty and greed. To truly benefit humanity, they should calm down their rhetoric and encourage others to make informed, realistic decisions when it come to the future of AI.

Works Cited

Adel, Amr, and Noor Alani. “Can Generative AI Reliably Synthesise Literature? Exploring Hallucination Issues in ChatGPT.” AI & Society, vol. 40, no. 8, Jun. 2025, pp. 6799-812

Bhatia, Aatish. “When A.I.’s Output Is a Threat to A.I. Itself.” The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2024, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive2024/08/26/upshot/ai-synthetic-data.html

Faraboschi, Paolo, et al. “Artificial General Intelligence: Humanity’s Downturn or Unlimited Prosperity.” Computer, vol. 56, no. 10, Oct 2023, pp. 93-101, http://doi.org/10.1109/mc.2023.3297739

Hutter, Frank, et al. Automated Machine Learning: Methods, Systems, Challenges. Springer, 2019

Kokotajlo, Daniel, et al. “AI 2027.” AI 2027, 3 Apr. 2025, http://AI-2027.com/race#narrative- 2027-06-30

McLean, Scott, et al. “The Risks Associated with Artificial General Intelligence: A Systematic Overview.” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, vol. 35, no. 5, Jul. 2021

Musiol, Martin. “Chapter 6: Artificial General Intelligence in Sight” Generative AI: Navigating the Course to the Artificial General Intelligence Future. John Wiley & Sons, 2024.

OpenAI. “Planning for AGI and Beyond.” OpenAI, 24 Feb. 2023, http://openai.com/index/planning-for-agi-and-beyond/

Singler, B. (2017). Roko’s Basilisk or Pascal’s? Thinking of Singularity Thought Experiments as Implicit Religion. Implicit Religion, 20(3), 279-297.
https://doi-org.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/10.1558/imre.35900

ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS IN JANUARY 2027

Michigan Pagan College Scholarship Fund is offering a $500.00 Scholarship for a rising high school senior, undergraduate, or graduate. All applicants must LIVE in Michigan. Applicants must be 17 years of age or older, have a current GPA of 2.5 or higher, be Pagan, and currently accepted in a full time course of study in any accredited two or four-year college or university. Applicants must provide their most recent school transcript to establish state of residency, and GPA requirements. In addition they must also state the reason for applying for this scholarship in 250 words or less and submit a 500 word essay about what being a Pagan means to them. There is a third essay a 3 Page typed, double-spaced, MLA formatted pages on the scholarly topic of your choosing. As always good luck to all those who apply. Michigan Pagan College Scholarship Fund

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