"WHITE CRISIS" AND/AS "EXISTENTIAL RISK," OR THE ENTANGLED APOCALYPTICISM OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race-religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to "White Crisis," a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they should be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long-duree entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as "algorithmic racism."