How Silicon Valleys AI tech culture gave birth to a trans death cult

It’s a plot a fiction writer might reject as too far-fetched: A group of radical transgender vegans, convinced AI will take over the world, allegedly go on a homicidal spree that leaves eight dead, including a US Border Patrol agent and a key murder trial witness.But the Zizians, as they are called, are quite real.

In his new book, “The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult,” investigative reporter Andy Ngo explains the twisted ideology behind the group, and its links to the faddish beliefs of many in Silicon Valley.An excerpt:In January 2016, Jack LaSota, a 23-year-old aspiring tech entrepreneur from Alaska, headed to Silicon Valley with big dreams. Before that, he was an engineering student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, researching space weather events.

But his passions veered elsewhere: video-game design, rationalism and effective altruism.One of his creations was titled Dystheism, ancient Greek for “bad god.” It was a puzzle game where players controlled the souls of dead people represented by humanoid, single-horned, faceless creatures with crackled, black-burned flesh.Players navigated lost souls through block-puzzle landscapes of the afterlife.His pitch: “This game will push your brain to the breaking point, just like your character’s soul.”The imagery would later feel like foreshadowing.Not long after Jack had begun coding Dystheism, his outward appearance began to change.

He started wearing a long, hooded black cloak around campus.He would call it a “Sith” robe — the garb of the dark-side warriors in the Star Wars universe — but with the hood pulled forward, he resembled something more ominous.Jack spent most of 2015 refining the game and applying for jobs in the Bay Area.

His blog, Sinceriously, documented this period.He used an image of a purple-tinted, fantasy-style female humanoid spirit as his avatar.“I moved to the Bay Area for proximity to the tech industry which I considered sort of my destiny,” he wr...