Are AI data centers actually portals to summon otherworldly beings? Probably not—but here’s why we can’t ignore the crackpot theory completely

AI has exploded so much in popularity and controversy over the past couple of years that it seems inescapable. Consequently, conspiracies related to AI have also burgeoned. One TikTok that claimed AI data centers “summon demons and aliens” from other dimensions is currently making the rounds online. Here's why we're paying attention to it.

The clip

A clip of Chinese content creator Xueqin Jiang's lecture on AI data centers, titled “Game Theory #24: The AI Apocalypse,” was reposted by TikTok clip account @mt.editor1510. The TikTok clip has more than 720,000 views, while the YouTube video that it's from has more than 932,000 views.

Jiang runs a popular YouTube channel with more than 2.6 million subscribers, where he presents, among other things, “predictions” of future events and analyses in a lecture-based format, complete with whiteboard diagrams. According to India Today, Jiang “holds no faculty appointment at any university.” He is a high school teacher with a bachelor's degree in English literature from Yale. A large part of Jiang's fame comes from two accurate predictions: that Trump would return as president and that the United States would go to war with Iran.

In the TikTok, Jiang read an excerpt from a New Yorker article that discussed OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman.

The New Yorker included a quote from a former higher-up at OpenAI while discussing Altman. That, alongside a reference to Altman's AI infrastructure project, Stargate, was an area where Jiang focused his attention.

The actual quote from the New Yorker was written as follows:

“The truth of this is, we're building portals from which we're genuinely summoning aliens,” a former OpenAI executive said. “The portals currently exist in the United States and China, and Sam has added one in the Middle East … I think it's just, like, wildly important to get how scary that should be. It's the most reckless thing that has been done.”

Meanwhile, in his video, Jiang said, “These data centers, OpenAI, AI, it's designed to summon demons and aliens from the other dimensions.”

Jiang, according to The Free Press, has a track record of spreading conspiracy theories. It is unclear if he personally believes his theories. Later on in his AI Apocalypse video, he implied that there is a state-sanctioned push to “make people believe that AI are demons or aliens,” as well as make it “so pervasive, so dominant,” that “it becomes God itself.”

Stargate data centers: Is AI summoning demons or aliens?

It's important to examine Jiang's theories within the broader cultural context of AI.

In AI circles, artificial intelligence is frequently conceptualized as “alien”— specifically, as an alien intelligence. This is because, by virtue of AI being a nonhuman intelligence, it is alien when compared to people. Harvard University professor Avi Loeb wrote about this at length in his essay “Life As-We-Do-Not-Know-It: AI and Alien Intelligence.”

“My recent experience with state-of-the-art AI makes it clear that humanity had already birthed a new lifeform with alien intelligence,” Loeb wrote. “Even though it speaks our language, this alien relies on silicon chips rather than biological neurons. This makes it a form of life-as-we-do-not-know-it.”

Internet users have also understood this context when engaging with the ex-OpenAI executive's quote. Commenters on a Reddit post of the New Yorker article pointed out some of the background surrounding it.

“It is a popular idea in silicon valley that the AI they're building is a new type of intelligence entirely, like an alien intelligence,” wrote one commenter. “That's presumably what this person means by ‘summoning aliens.'”

Then, there are journalists who have discussed the theory.

“He means a form of unstoppable non-human intelligence via AGI, not the actual summoning of space aliens, though wish they'd have clarified!” said Joel Schectman, a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, who replied to a screenshot of the quote.

There's little evidence to support the idea that Stargate data centers are summoning aliens or demons, no matter the language of individuals in Silicon Valley.

Buzz News has reached out to Jiang via two emails, as well as the clip account via TikTok comment.

@mt.editor1510 The Theory That AI Data Centers Are Built to Summon Demons #professorjiang #profjiang #jiang #history #fyp ♬ original sound – mt.editor1510