People Are Asleep: The Reality of AI

This talk argues that contemporary artificial intelligence is not merely a technical innovation but the latest expression of a deeper metaphysical project that reshapes how we understand the world, the human being, and even God. Drawing on historical genealogies of computation—from early modern rationalism and symbolic logic to today’s data-centric machine learning—Dr. Boumediene Hamzi shows how AI embodies a specifically modern ontology that reduces reality to quantifiable substrates and transforms human life into optimizable information.

To illustrate the stakes of these questions, Hamzi draws on narrative material from People Are Asleep: Awakening from the Simulated Faith, which imagines a future in which Islamic practice becomes fully optimized and algorithmically perfected—yet spiritually hollow. Through this fictional lens, the existential risks of allowing AI to mediate or redefine religious experience are highlighted.

Building on recent work in Islamic ethics and metaphysics, the talk ultimately offers a constructive pathway for Muslim scholars, technologists, and communities: to engage AI neither through uncritical adoption nor reactionary rejection, but through a metaphysically grounded and spiritually serious philosophy of technology—one that safeguards the human capacity for witnessing, wonder, and awakening in an age increasingly shaped by machines.

This event is part of the Muslim LitFest. Find the full programme here: tickettailor.com/events/muslimlitfest25

Boumediene Hamzi is a senior scientist at the Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech. He co-leads the Research Interest Group on "Machine Learning and Dynamical Systems" at the Alan Turing Institute. His main research interests are at the interface(s) of Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Algorithmic Information Theory, with the aim of analysing complex systems and developing a robust theoretical framework for Machine Learning. Boumediene has been studying Western and Islamic Philosophy for about 20 years. He is currently pursuing a part-time degree in Islamic Philosophy.