I don't think they are a cult in the strict sense. They are a lot like Objectivists, a group who got into an autodidact offering grand claims based on a lot of jargon and handwaving, throwing out invented jargon and redefining terms creatively, and with a bad habit of narcissistically dismissing anything that doesn't fit the model. Since their intellectual, EY, is an autodidact who isn't trained/involved in the fields he claims to have expertise in, there's no body of peers there who will put him in line as he wanders in error, and naturally he's naively dismissive of the academics/experts who bother to offer critiques, or hand-waves away critiques with impenetrable jargon.

They are more frustratingly ignorant, over-certain of thing that are far from knowable, than a cult. People really want to be certain, they want answers, and they will latch onto all kinds of things to get it, even believing in an 'friendly AI' as an ersatz God, with an inevitable singularity as an ersatz rapture, and quantum mechanics substituting for metaphysics.