In between some old family history and recent US politics, I think there are other things I'd rather reserve the weighty word "cult" for... However, should it arise, one of the features that might convince me is this:
In the name of "loyalty" or "faith" cults require members to burn their bridges, actively cutting off their own potential to escape to any other social support network. That may mean creating enemies out of former associates, humiliating rituals or blackmail material, or simply ruining their reputations through obvious lies.
I think I did quite enough to be vague and oblique on that context, so that it wasn't the focus, and any reader could avoid the topic... if they chose to.
The utility of current-era AI may well be overstated, and the business models of certain companies might be doubtful, but that doesn't make AI it a "cult".
If you blindly ignore all the drawbacks, preach that "future is now" and whoever is not using the slot machine "will be left behind", then you're in a cult.
An opinion held, in my estimation, by a tiny (but noisy) minority of people who have always existed; the trend obsessed rebuild-the-world types who probably think that AI will soon be able to write unaided a kernel in Rust superior in 100% of metrics to Linux.
In the name of "loyalty" or "faith" cults require members to burn their bridges, actively cutting off their own potential to escape to any other social support network. That may mean creating enemies out of former associates, humiliating rituals or blackmail material, or simply ruining their reputations through obvious lies.