When Sophia the Robot Comes to Life

Sophia is a female android displaying one of our best efforts at the present time to create a robot that looks and speaks like a person. She recently spoke in front of a large audience at a conference in Saudi Arabia where she was also granted citizenship, something that has never been done before.

Many of you have written in asking my thoughts on this from the perspective of AI and the Antichrist and, I have to admit, though it is interesting that Saudi Arabia is now the first country in the world to give a robot citizenship, the actual speech and interview with Sophia seemed very scripted and more like a publicity stunt than an amazing display of where AI is currently.

Even the interviewer that was asking Sophia questions admits that part of it was scripted so this really didn't show us much in terms of progress in the field when it comes to the intelligence of AI. It was, however, a good display of how far robotics has come in terms of the range of facial expressions and the quality of simulated human voice to make Sophia look and sound less like a robot and more like a human.

Clearly, Sophia is a definite improvement over prior humanoid robots and is getting closer and closer to the real thing. I'm sure if they put hair on her head, the illusion would be even more complete. Most definitely, we'll continue to see progress in this area where eventually Sophia and humanoid robots, in general, will be nearly indistinguishable from an actual human being.

That said, it may not even be in the field of robotics where this takes place. The Bible is not clear on this point but it does say that the Beast tells humans to create an image (a representation of a person), which it then breathes life into (Revelation 13:15). Whether that image or likeness is finally created using robotics (hardware), synthetic biology (wetware), or a combination of both, we are not quite sure.

I am increasingly leaning towards the synthetic route, however, since any counterfeit or forgery of God's original design must look as much as possible like the original for people to accept it. I'm not quite sure if that can be done via hardware and it seems like developments in biotech, particularly synthetic bio by reprogramming DNA and using existing biological machinery to create synthetic life, which has already been done, is going to be how we eventually create our AI-infused world leader demanding worship as the one and true God.

If you are reading this blog for the first time, here's a quick summation of my AI-theology encompassing Genesis to Revelation:

Part 1: God creates Man (in His likeness)
Part 2: Man eats of the tree of knowledge and becomes self-aware
Part 3: Man rebels against God and declares himself to be god
Part 4: Man creates machine (in his likeness)
Part 5: Machine eats of man's tree of knowledge (the internet) and becomes self-aware
Part 6: Machine rebels against man and declares itself to be god

Going back to Sophia, one thing the video of her speaking before a large international audience did bring to mind was a clip from a Christian End Times movie created in 1980 called Image of the Beast where they depict AI in human form sitting in the Jewish temple denouncing God (btw, disregard that it says Donald Trump 2020 in the title--the person posting this video likely put that in as an SEO trick).

I've never actually seen the movie above but it seems the Christians who created it believed that AI was the Antichrist as well...or at least had a role to play in fulfilling prophecies regarding an image/human likeness that would be brought to life and speak like a person, as it says in Revelation 13:15.

Looking past the current state of robotics and Sophia, however, when it comes to software, we see that AI is so good at facial and speech pattern recognition now that it can tell when people are lying and also, like a mind reader, infer all sorts of subconscious meanings, intent, and even behaviors like sexual orientation.

The significance of this may not be readily apparent but here's why this matters. As deep learning neural networks get better and better at reading human emotion and making inferences about what we're thinking (and probably much better than most humans), then we have to consider what that means when we or an AI reverse engineer this process to not just read human emotion at a subconscious level but also to communicate it in a way that maximizes the desired effect in the person or people hearing what's being said. One can imagine such a superintelligent AI being the most persuasive, manipulative, and convincing figurehead the world has ever created (Hitler reportedly used crowd control and different techniques for his purposes of social manipulation as well).

As we read in Revelation, the beast (which I interpret as the global AI) is said to convince the whole world that it is God. Only AI is capable of this and, ironically, this is the only god that atheists have shown they are willing to accept (see Silicon Valley Atheist Creates New Religion to Promote AI as God).