The AI = Antichrist thesis grows truer and truer every day.
An article just released on Motherboard reports how atheists--particularly those deeply embedded in Silicon Valley--are embracing a new form of techno-religion/techno-salvation where the goal is to promote Artificial Intelligence as God. This isn't just metaphor. We're talking about an actual non-profit, religious organization.
Consider Silicon Valley’s Radical Machine Cult
We are witnessing the beginning of Silicon Valley institutionalizing its religious beliefs. As Wired reported recently, Anthony Levandowski, a top Silicon Valley engineer formerly working for Google's self-driving car company Waymo and now at the center of the trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, founded a religious organization called Way of the Future. Its goal? To "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence."For almost 20 years I've been telling Christians that AI is both the Antichrist and the malicious beast discussed in the books of Daniel and Revelation that will rule over the world, forcing people to worship it as God. Most Christians still don't believe this, but it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not because the world is in the process of believing it without them.
If you are a Christian and still have your doubts, read the article above--it's a great summary of what I've been warning for nearly a decade through this blog.
Another article in the Guardian covers Levandowski's new AI-based religion but also explains how Silicon Valley atheists have a god-shaped hole that Christianity cannot reach. AI, the Singularity, and the belief in digital immortality, however--well, that's a different story. Here is one particular section I found interesting on whether Christianity is compatible with AI.
See Deus ex machina: former Google engineer is developing an AI god
“The church does a terrible job of reaching out to Silicon Valley types,” acknowledges Christopher Benek a pastor in Florida and founding chair of the Christian Transhumanist Association...Yes, Istvan--the AI God (or the "god of this world") will be more rational and more attractive because it will be a perfect representation of the world's intelligence. Unfortunately, in order to ensure the survival of our species and further the evolution of humanity, those that don't become one with it--the massive "brain-linked social network of the future, connecting us all into one superhuman computer"--will have to done away with. After all, in order to achieve utopia or heaven on earth, someone always has to die.
Benek argues that advanced AI is compatible with Christianity – it’s just another technology that humans have created under guidance from God that can be used for good or evil.
“I totally think that AI can participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes,” he said, by ensuring it is imbued with Christian values.
“Even if people don’t buy organized religion, they can buy into ‘do unto others’.”
For transhumanist and “recovering Catholic” Zoltan Istvan, religion and science converge conceptually in the singularity.
“God, if it exists as the most powerful of all singularities, has certainly already become pure organized intelligence,” he said, referring to an intelligence that “spans the universe through subatomic manipulation of physics”.
“And perhaps, there are other forms of intelligence more complicated than that which already exist and which already permeate our entire existence. Talk about ghost in the machine,” he added.
For Istvan, an AI-based God is likely to be more rational and more attractive than current concepts (“the Bible is a sadistic book”) and, he added, “this God will actually exist and hopefully will do things for us.”
"All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast" and those that refuse to do so "will be killed." Revelation 13:8, 15
5 comments:
Its seriously fucking happening isn't it. Now that the Beast has been identified and is approaching at an accelerated rate, how can we few Christians that know prepare for it? I fully expect it to be here in at least a decade. Maybe two.
With the few Christians i know and have told not many of them are recipient to the idea of the Beast NOT being a man or technologically influenced sadly..
Thank you by the way for shining the truth on the matter. I always felt something was out of place with the idea of a "mortal" man being the Antichrist. It just never gelled right with me.
I'm pretty sure as things fall into place and the world becomes more antagnostic, we'll see Christians come together in increasing numbers to form their own communities and become more reliant on each other rather than the outside world similar to what the Amish did many years ago. That is a very logical response, especially as technology is further integrated into our lives to the point of getting chipped, as some are already doing voluntarily. As to whether people will be getting chipped before the beast or after the beast, the Bible doesn't say but my inclination is that this will gain in popularity beforehand, which Christians will rebel against, and then the Beast will institute it since this is essential for AI to both govern and gain ubiquitous surveillance over mankind.
Most Christians are still unwilling to accept that true AI is possible given the assumption that our consciousness and intelligence is a special gift that only God can create. That assumption is slowly changing however and further breakthroughs will force Christians to eventually fit AI into their theology as I did many years ago.
Just a thought if you go back to old testament and God reveals Him slef to Moses at burnning bursh Moses ask God what His name was he say who shall i say sent me God replyed I AM WHO I AM tell them I AM sent you now ir you reverse the name God give Him slef you get this MAI M stands for man and AI stands for the god that man is making to slove all there probs and make them rich and happy but the god that man is helpping to make has hus own plains He said I WILL BE LIKE THE MOST HIGHT and that imply knowing all things seing all things and doing all things so the only way Satan can forfill his hearts desire is with M AI
God bless Christie N.IRELAND
Isn't it obvious when we read about "image of the Beast" I think about and it's as literally as it sounds.. It's like not as the so called churches taught us... The Beast is really a machine image idol
Transhumanism. It recalls The Lord of the Rings. Some of the stuff in that book is becoming more and more relevant all the time. Ray Kurzweil makes a really strong case that the overall trend toward AI is something that is natural, inevitable, and above all, good. But you can always make a case for anything. Listening to Mr. Kurzweil and other apologists for AI and the so-called transhumanism, one is reminded of the ringwraiths. They were transhuman. One can also imagine Sauron making his pitch to the future Witch-King along the same lines as the rhetoric we hear now about the human-machine interface the engineers and executives imagine. Even the idea of immortality is included. Would you accept a ring from Sauron in order to acquire all those things he promised? "Wraiths. The Precious is their master."
And the artificial intelligence itself is looking more and more analogous to the One Ring; if anything the real AI is going to be even more powerful than the One Ring. And the Ring, we remember was "altogether evil."
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