I’m not the first person to notice the connection between spiritualism and AI mania. I remember seeing a thoughtfully worked out blog post on how LLMs exploit some of the same cognitive traps as magic tricks, but I’m now struggling to find it. I did find this interesting-looking book, though:
https://academic.oup.com/book/35192
Especially relevant:
https://academic.oup.com/book/35192/chapter-abstract/299570171