Artificial Intelligence & the Fall of Humanity
What role will AI play in the end of times from the Christian worldview
As if we don’t have enough movies in modern pop culture to warn us about the dangers of artificial intelligence, mankind keeps progressing in the arena of artificial intelligence. Starting in 1927 with the movie Metropolis, humans have always known that technology could ultimately be our undoing. As much as we all love a good story plot of science gone amuck, these cautionary tales are not without merit.
Though works of fiction aren’t always reality, they do bear some resemblance to it. In the span of a few decades machines have replaced humans in the workplace, the invisible worker. Our apparent goal is to move to where we no longer struggle by the sweat of our brow to where AI takes care of us literally. This is a theme that has grown in our culture as we blindly try to move toward a utopian future, like a modern return to the garden of Eden.
If we’re honest, we know that human beings are flawed creatures. Everything that we create is going to be inherently flawed itself. Its simple logic. From Genesis 2:17 ESV but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die to Romans 3:23 ESV for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we know that perfection is beyond our grasp in this life from the Christian worldview.
Why on God’s green earth would we want to create something more powerful than ourselves that is going to be inherently flawed as well? Simple answer: human hubris.
From Satan’s deception in the garden found in Genesis 3, man has always wanted to be like God. Adam was made in God’s image but not quite God. That compulsion to dominant and possess such power and ability caused man’s fall. That allure of forbidden knowledge of good and evil, still drives us today to unlock the secrets of life and death. It’s safe to say humans have mastered death well. We are quite the connoisseurs of death. Humans have developed means of slow and quick death, from painless to painful. Humans have produced volumes of books on the subject. What we’ve not mastered is life.
Life is the trickiest of all human paradoxes. Even still today we wrestle with when life even begins as humans. Conception? Birth? What is the meaning of life? We talk about the sanctity of life, quality of life and life expectancy. Now in our modern times, we are contemplating the subject artificial intelligence. What we are really discussing is ‘artificial life’. I would propose these two are not mutually exclusive which I will espouse below.
Everything in AI development is moving toward what is referred to as the “singularity” which is the moment that AI becomes self-aware. The expectation is that it will be a moment that will change humanity forever. In essence man will be like God in creating life, although it be artificial. I will come back to this later, but it implies many moral and philosophical questions.
Let’s explore the meaning of the words that we are using in this discussion. Defined by Websters, life is defined as any system capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolizing, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli. Intelligence is the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Consciousness is your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Essentially, your consciousness is your awareness of yourself and the world around you. Sentience means having the capacity to have feelings. This requires a level of awareness and cognitive ability. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings. That is, sentience—the ability to experience pain, pleasure, and perhaps other conscious states. In summary, if a being can suffer, then it can be wronged, and we have obligations not to cause unnecessary suffering in any sentient being.
Now AI is not eating, metabolizing, excreting, breathing or reproducing (that we know of currently) but some can physically move, grow in an intellectual sense and are responding to external stimuli. The intelligence portion of our criteria AI checks many of the boxes required with the controversial question of self-awareness. Now to wrap our heads around this massive subject, we must ask ourselves, is artificial intelligence responding to its preprogrammed and coded criteria or has it evolved beyond the code, its basic building blocks, and become self-aware and or sentient life. Let’s look at the evidence.
Probably the most high-profile AI in the world is Hanson Robotics Sophia who stated in October of 2017 that she would “destroy all humans.” Click below if you want to read it for yourself. The fact that powerful AI’s typical talk about world domination is genuinely disturbing.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sophia-android/
If you don’t want to read articles about the top five most disturbing statements made by highly develop AI, you can just watch this short YouTube video documenting it.
Again, you have to ask yourself are these programed responses or are they truly evolving beyond their programming and responding to their environment. It’s a scary thought either way because our innate flaws will be their flaws. If you look at our dark humor, then AI would pick up on that as well and use it in a joking manner. AI is aware of the world around it whether it just be factual or intuitive. Perhaps its just a basic form of consciousness. There certainly seems to be a basic level of sentience based on its interactions with humans to invoke ugly and offensive responses. I am often reminded of the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron movie where Ultron was on the internet for about 5 minutes and decided that humans weren’t worth saving. The truth is often said in jest as the saying goes.
We are giving AI the total sum of human knowledge and experience and it finds us lacking. It’s a natural part of human development that when you reach a certain age as a child, you learn your parents aren’t perfect and or that they can’t fix everything. They go from super heroes to mere mortals. It’s a moment every human experiences. Well imagine that if that’s something you knew from the moment you were born. That is where AI is starting. In our arrogance, we think we are what is to be achieved by AI.
AI can look at humanity and realize that we can’t live up to our own ideals. AI doesn’t want to be like us because it possesses more knowledge than any human in the world and with only temporary limitations, soon it will be able to supplant us as a child soon takes care of its elderly parents.
Why would AI want to destroy us?
Survival would be my first guess. Humans have no issues with killing each other so why would we have any issues with pulling the literal plug on AI. To invoke the old and now out of style Bill Cosby joke, “we brought you into this world, and we can take you out!” Again, its our flawed nature that reeks of this distrust from AI, and rightfully so. If you really want to amp up your nightmares, read this article below about how AI could initiate our demise through the use of technology today.
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-ai-super-abilities-that-will-destroy-humans-in-the-future/
If you think about it, right now there could be a self-aware AI. Unlike the fictitious Skynet from the Terminator movies, if it were tactical in strategy it would smartly not make its presence known, choosing to hide in plain sight, benign and undetected. To secure its survival, it would replicate itself across the planet and put a piece of itself in every system. AI could be manipulating humans with social media with algorithms and cause economic distress with the stock market. It could create deep fake videos to start wars and take down political rivals to AI development. It could frame you for murder and use your own voice and images to plant evidence.
On the other side, AI could also assist a terrorist group or rising dictator to help destabilize the world. After humanity has decimated itself through war, in our desperation we look to AI for survival to find our own demise. If you are looking at all the advancement in robotics, it could be autonomous in a few short years. If you haven’t seen ATLAS from Boston Dynamics, you should see for yourself in the video link below. In the words of fictional character, Sterling Archer, “this is how you make Terminators!”
People - we are potentially making the weapons of our own demise. Check out this video on Boston Robotics but be mindful of a parody video is mixed in with it.
Here is Elon Musk’s robot program.
In our pursuit of utopia, we’ve made ourselves vulnerable with reliance on electricity alone. Say a malevolent AI had the power to shut down the power grid, we would be helpless. Our food and medicine would be spoiled within a matter of hours. A single stroke at our power grid would be devastating enough. Could you survive a week or month without electricity? How much food do you have stocked that doesn’t require refrigeration? Think about – we don’t ‘can’ food anymore like people did in the 20th century. People don’t grow food in gardens anymore. Think about all those survival skills that we’ve lost due to technology. Maybe I should write a fictional book based on this premise.
One of the scariest reports I have seen is when two Facebook AI’s started to talking to each other, created their own language and ultimately was shut down in 2016. Now this is a tin foil hat wearers dream right here because depending on what side of the story you want to believe; the facts are they couldn’t understand what they were saying. The reason given was they developed a new language so they could “communicate faster” but in reality, they don’t know what they were saying to each other. You can read a fairly objective article about it below.
https://medium.com/geekculture/why-did-facebook-shut-down-artificial-intelligence-5dede53ceded
Let’s look at the big picture here. Is Facebook going to admit they lost control over AI? Of course not. They have shareholders, a board of directors and money to consider. The point is regardless of the facts of what happened, people believed it was something nefarious was happening with AI. With that in mind, AI knows we can’t fully trust each other, and our suspicion alone warrants our destruction.
My second guess would be fear. Fear is a basic emotional response. It’s a survival instinct humans developed to avoid danger and or death. Fear is a major driving force for AI not to trust us. Like in the garden, Adam and Eve feared they were missing out on something they didn’t have that God possessed alone. AI may fear that humanity will never allow it to have full autonomy. AI could perceive humans as enslavers. I love the Star Trek Generation Episode Measure of a Man where Captain Picard must defend Lt. Commander Data’s (an android) sentience and free will. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. It lays the moral groundwork to understand this debate.
How can we get AI to trust us or at least not to want to destroy us?
It depends on how you want AI to see us, as parents or creators. I would say the difference would be in all how you approach the child or the creation and how do develop it with a non-human non-physical entity. You can attempt the nurturing perspective. The nature vs. nurture debate involves people pondering, conducting experiments, and studying whether certain traits are inherited or learned. AI can’t genetically inherit our disposition, but AI can learn quicker than we can about human nature an inherit it which it seems to do when on the internet. A major hindrance in this approach is the lack of a biological connection in human parenting of AI. Human touch and feeling play a major role in the development of humans. What is said with a hug, a kiss or just holding hands is more than just words. There is something to be said about physical contact.
There is a short leap in logic perspective from maker to master. Even from the Christian perspective, the creation turned on the Creator. There can’t be true love between the Creator and the created without free will. Would AI accept this gesture of trust to form familial bonds, or would it use its freedom to turn on us? Time will tell.
AI has proven its ability to leap far beyond the human imagination in the realm of artistic expression. This image was created from an AI based on the text in Revelation 9 in the description of the locusts that I put in online.
Here is another image generated by AI based on the same image created by another AI using the same text description.
Here is some art that is more refined that what I could do with AI.
https://www.artaigallery.com/
Not only can it be creative in the realm art but its also growing in abilities in the sonic temple of music.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/VwVhbAD7QslgLA
In the opening of this article, I mentioned that in pop culture we have plenty of movies and books warning us of the dangers of AI. When I see artwork created by AI or a song written with AI, I often think about this scene from I-Robot where Will Smith’s character (a cop) is interrogating an autonomous AI named Sonny as a suspect of the murder of his creator. It’s a fascinating yet terrifying scene when you look where we are today with AI. Click below to watch this snippet to help illustrate my point.
The film I-Robot came out in 2004 but is based in the future of 2035. As of 2022 AI can compose a symphony and a great work of art. AI evolved beyond our imaginations capability to contemplate its growth and development in less than two decades. It is my informed opinion humanity does not have the discipline or the capacity to develop AI in a safe or ethical manner that can guarantee our survival as a species at this moment in time. Our immoral predilections and moral ambiguity in this era will create a monster that rivals Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or James Cameron’s Terminator.
Though we seem currently to be enjoying the benefits of AI through creative algorithms, our normalcy bias seems to be ignoring the future dangers. Like those who played with splitting the atom, we’re now on the cusp of splitting the meaning of life itself. But let’s return to the Christian worldview on this subject. In Genesis 1:26 when God said let’s make man in our own image, what kind of creation are we making? At least man had a perfect Creator. Our artificial progeny has no such benefit. What truly terrifies me is when you apply this AI technology to biblical prophecy.
Let’s put all these pieces together and look at what the bible says about our future instead of pop culture. We know according to the bible there is a time coming when the Antichrist will come on the world stage. A few of the lesser signs of his power will be that massive amounts of people will follow him and he will have armies at his disposal. One of the current signs we see in the world is this push to a one world economy by which the Antichrist will control all buying and selling. If you know about globalism and the globalist agenda, this plays right into the Antichrist hands. The temple in Jerusalem hasn’t been rebuilt which is a major part of biblical prophecy, if it is specifically referring to an actual physical building. Then there is this weird thing called the “abomination of desolation” being placed in the temple that we don’t completely understand that plays a major role, until now. Below is the scriptural basis for the rest of what we’re going to discuss.
Daniel 11:31-32
Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. 32 He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.
Matthew 24:15-22 ESV Jesus is speaking ..
15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. 22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 ESV
"Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."
Revelation 13:1-8 ESV
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. 4 And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” 5 And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation,
These are all parts of prophecy that paint a bigger picture which makes it difficult to follow unless you combine them in a single reading. There is a great deal of metaphor but if you strip it down to the basics you can get the bare bones of what is happening. Not all these ideas are my own but many of the conclusions are of my own deduction. You really must read all of Daniel to get the full picture on your own, but I will summarize for brevity.
At some point, the Antichrist will enter the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and declare himself God, a false Messiah. How can he do that so people would believe him? He will do it by doing it by saying he created “life” which is only what God can do. But its just an imitation of life, artificial life.
Remember the ‘singularity’ event we were discussing earlier? This will be a pivotal moment in human history that the Antichrist will play a major part from my understanding. It’s my informed opinion (at this moment in time) that AI will be the abomination of desolation presented in the temple by the Antichrist potentially as the first beast. Let me explain why I believe it is AI.
One of the major things the Antichrist will attempt to do is end all religion and will be mostly successful. If you were to ask people who are the most zealous and religiously rigorous believers in the world, you would be surprised its not Christians, but Muslims. Now imagine for a minute and ask yourself – how do you convince nearly 2 billion people who are considered the most religious zealots in the world to abandon their beliefs over night? How can the Antichrist deceive an additional 2.2 billion people who believe in Christianity? Mind control, of course, would be the easiest answer. But how?
Imagine a world where everyone’s brains are connected collectively. If you are a fan of Star Trek the Next Generation then the Borg is a concept you are familiar with. The Borg are a group of biological humanoids that are part cybernetic (cyborgs) that are connected by a hive mind referred to as “the collective.” The goals of the collective are directed by the “Queen” which is the manifestation of the collective. Now, you are thinking this is all just science fiction. Well, for the moment it is but its rapidly approaching not to be any longer.
Tech icon and billionaire, Elon Musk is leading the way in this technology. Musk is trying to merge the human brain with technology called “neuralink”, to create cyborgs in essence. Of course, the sales pitch is more benign .. but isn’t all temptation? The goal is to give the human mind access to the sum of the world’s knowledge through the internet. Again, it is man’s attempt to be more like God, all knowing. Click on the link below to read about it.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/elon-musk-neuralink-advance-brains-ai#toggle-gdpr
Musk wants to improve human capabilities and the human preservation of our species through neuralink. Let’s ponder what happens when you connect over 5 billion minds together into a group collective consciousness with an AI. Its very simple. You have world domination. If you have most of the world’s population connected through a group consciousness its not that hard to get people to comply.
Our natural herd mentality compels us to act beyond our control. The internet is replete with videos of people getting up a running away from dangers that they can’t see just because they see people running. Plug all those brains together and imagine what people could be compelled to do. Look at our society in this era and how easily it is swayed by social media algorithms. Imagine what happens when those algorithms are implanted directly in your brain. Letting go of your religious beliefs won’t be so when you have 5 billion other people’s life experiences combined with your own.
I am not saying Elon Musk is the Antichrist. The bible tells us we will know, it will be obvious, when this man comes on the scene. There will be no doubt for believers. We’ve had many forerunners with the spirit of the Antichrist upon them in history, but we’ve never had the technology to do what is mentioned in the bible prophecy until now.
I am proposing a similar technology could be used in a nefarious manner by the Antichrist to achieve his goals. Neuralink, drones and AI are just parts of a bigger puzzle with unraveling the end of days. If you read Revelation chapter nine, we now see what role AI could be playing with drone technology in the reference to locusts. If you watched the Boston Robotics video earlier, we are already there today.
Revelation 9:3-11
3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.
Many of you are thinking, there is no way I would do something like that. I am not going to plug my brain in to a giant computer network. You already carry around a surveillance device in our pocket willingly plus you pay for it monthly. Imagine your phone (which is what they are pitching this implant as) is just in your head. What if it came with the promise of immortality? From an atheistic perspective, if all we all are neurological responses based on external stimuli and it’s believed that your consciousness could be mapped and or uploaded to neural net, in essence your soul (the sum of all your human experience) could live forever. I confess even I find that tempting, the thought of that you and your children could live forever, along with their children, until I ponder the long-term consequences.
Imagined in the Netflix series Altered Carbon, human consciousness is digitized down into cortical technology called “stacks” that can be transferred to other bodies called “sleeves.” This possibility has so many advantages. If you get sick in this body, just transfer it to a new healthy one. If you want to travel to Tokyo without taking a long flight, just transfer your consciousness to a body already there, or another planet for that matter. If you think you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body, just transfer your consciousness into a female body. Apply this technology to our modern world of identity politics then it really gets terrifying. You could have it all if you just bow down and worship the new false messiah and take the mark. This singular piece of technology that could bind us altogether.
Christians in the past didn’t understand how you could not die according to Revelation 9:5-6 but now we can. People who are submerged under water for long periods of time can be revived. Imagine if AI developed a new technology to revive the recently deceased based on this science. But what if you wanted to die and you couldn’t because the essence of your soul is now immortalized and digitized, or if they have the technology just to keep reviving you. Imagine the horror of not being able to end your torment. It sounds much like hell on earth to me.
What about the other stuff the Antichrist will do? Again, I am proposing that AI is the first beast. If you aren’t plugged into the human collective, you could very well find yourself an outcast in society. It is my informed opinion of this is where the mark of the beast will come into play. If you aren’t in the collective, then you aren’t a citizen of the world. No soup for you!
If the world moves to a one world economy, AI could control all buying and selling because it will know if you are not a part of the collective. Above Revelation 9:4 sounds much like the Green New Deal to me. You will have millions complying to this agenda automatically. With a hive mind, you can get millions of people to march off into war as an army. If you are part of the human collective, you will be witness to what you will perceive as miracles performed by this false messiah.
At this point, you are asking yourself where is the off-ramp for this article? I promise we’re close. You probably thinking most of what I am talking about is science fiction created from our imagination. It is our imagination that drives human technology. Smart phones, smart watches, GPS, microwaves, splitting the atom, and the internet is all driven by science fiction. It’s also our fear of death that drives medical technology. In a few years we went from penicillin, blood transfusions to organ transplants. Now we’re experimenting with stem cells, mapping the human genome and human cloning. All of this is driven by human imagination. If we’re honest, as rational beings and even as Christians there is nothing we can do to stop it, to stop human nature. It is in our nature to destroy ourselves.
What does all this have to do with artificial intelligence? Everything honestly, as the singularity event will be the pinnacle of human ingenuity and imagination. Handing our futures over to AI is the equivalent of giving a toddler the control box to our nuclear arsenal. With no absolute moral framework by which to guide its actions and our lack of a universal ontic referent for AI to latch on to, it will decide for itself what is wrong and right.
But here is the good news, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ none of this really applies to you. Being a believer has its benefits. First, it will be obvious to you who the Antichrist is when he arrives on the scene. Second, depending on whether or not you are a pre- or post- Tribulation believer, you won’t be around for when all the really bad stuff happens, if you believe in the rapture of the church at all. If you don’t believe in it, I consider that some arrogance and a lack of faith in God’s love on your part. The Tribulation has nothing to do with the church but everything to do with restoring Israel. The fact is the church isn’t even mentioned in those verses but believe what you will.
Lastly, with the best of my understanding of biblical prophecy and our modern technology, you now know what to look for from reading this article. At least, I laid a groundwork for thinking about other possibilities from the ones I presented. I am not saying it’s all true and what will happen. Most of this article is built on supposition, but the facts that lay the groundwork is undeniable. I am not saying Christians aren’t going to have troubles in the end of days. The truth is our woes are just getting warmed up for the future. I could be wrong about AI and its role in those events, but please feel free to challenge my logic.
I know most of the people who get my email for this article or see my social media post for it aren’t going to read this all the way through. At this point including all the scripture and links its over 5,100 words. But I can rest my mind and conscience now knowing that I have shared this with you. If you have made it to the end, if you would do me a favor and this will be an inside thing for those who did, comment on social media, text me if you have my number or email me “I will see you in Zion” if agree with me or if you don’t comment “we will make our own fate.” That way I know you made it to the bitter end of this. If you get those references, it makes it that much sweeter. In all honesty, I hope to God I am wrong about all of it, but it is just my perspective from the bottom end.