{"id":10956,"date":"2017-10-06T14:08:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T14:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=10956"},"modified":"2017-10-25T13:59:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T13:59:17","slug":"technological-anti-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/technological-anti-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Technological Anti-Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7508\" src=\"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/logoinside.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"45\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/screen-shot-2013-07-23-at-3-35-03-pm.png?fit=578%2C386&amp;strip=all\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">When most people think of an anti-christ, it&#8217;s as a &#8220;personage of evil&#8221;: some prominent human imbued with evil or even a demon incarnate.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/8d\/Waddesdon_Manor_and_Gardens_-_geograph.org.uk_-_649037.jpg\/220px-Waddesdon_Manor_and_Gardens_-_geograph.org.uk_-_649037.jpg\" width=\"140\" height=\"106\" \/>For many decades, it has been thought that such a &#8220;person&#8221; would operate in the arenas of politics and wealth (think: Rothschilds). <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><em>But in our cyber age<\/em>, it doesn&#8217;t seem unreasonable to wonder if perhaps the base of support for such a nefarious person &#8212; more than raw power or money &#8212; would be technological.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">In this regard, one looks at the massive high-tech oligarchies and frets a bit of how powerful &#8212; and potentially controlling &#8212; they have become. Amazon has put countless small businesses (including Catholic bookstores)\u00a0<em>out<\/em> of business; is now in the business of groceries; may soon be selling cars; controls a large percentage of internet servers (including ones servicing government); is so important economically that one state is offering to name a city &#8220;Amazon&#8221; (if Amazon opens a major operation there); and is trying to enter the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the parcel-delivery business (infringing on the likes of UPS).<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/mediapoliticsinperspective.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/jeff_bezos_headshot1.jpg?w=261&amp;h=348\" alt=\"Image result for jeff bezos eyes drudge\" width=\"115\" height=\"153\" \/>It has gotten to the point<\/span> where one might ask what you\u00a0<em>can&#8217;t<\/em> buy through Amazon, and also to the point, remarkably enough, where the firm is threatening the very existence of giant retailers such as Costco and Target (and also throwing a scare &#8212; unthinkable a few short years ago &#8212; into mighty Wal-Mart).\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Any company\u00a0<em>that<\/em> far-reaching bears watching [pictured to the\u00a0<em>left:<\/em>\u00a0Amazon founder and CEO Jim Bezos].<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><em>Companies such as Microsoft,<\/em> Google, Facebook, and Apple are likewise massive (Apple has more cash than the country of Canada).\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Will a &#8220;man of perdition,&#8221; a personage of evil, rise from the techno-corporate ranks?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Or what about this question:<\/span> might the ultra-techies create artificially intelligent <em>machines<\/em> that take over &#8212; even in the military?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Could an anti-christ come, some day, in the way of &#8220;Artificial Intelligence&#8221;: a master computer like HAL in 2001\u00a0<em>Space Odyssey<\/em> that can think for itself and create and outsmart any human? (Theoretically, a computer may one day be built with all available data on earth locked in its cerebral circuitry.) <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">They are now working on A.I. involving not just significant math but an intuitive talent that according to <em>The New York Times,<\/em> some call &#8220;a dark art.&#8221;<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Elon_Musk_2015.jpg\/800px-Elon_Musk_2015.jpg\" alt=\"A close-up of Musk's face while giving a talk\" width=\"260\" height=\"381\" \/>Elon Musk, founder of Paypal and now in the smart-car (Tesla) and space travel business, is raising alarms &#8212; even referring to A.I. as <em>&#8220;summoning the demon.&#8221;<\/em> We&#8217;re talking way beyond &#8220;Siri&#8221;\u00a0 and &#8220;Echo&#8221; and Google&#8217;s search algorithms.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; color: #ff0000;\"><strong><span class=\"s1\" style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">As an outlet reported recently:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span class=\"s1\" style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">&#8220;The Tesla founder tweeted his alarm in response to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/10\/02\/an-ai-god-will-emerge-by-2042-and-write-its-own-bible-will-you-worship-it\/\">a\u00a0<em>VentureBeat<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0about the possibility of an A.I. &#8216;god&#8217; emerging by 2042,\u00a0reports CNBC. One of the people featured in the article was Anthony Levandowski, Google\u2019s self-driving car engineer who has established a nonprofit religious organization called Way of the Future.\u00a0Way of the Future\u2019s mission statement is &#8216;to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society.'&#8221;<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Said the headline in <em>VentureBeat<\/em>: &#8220;An A.I. God Will Emerge By 2042 and Write Its Own Bible. Will You Worship It?&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">An increasing number of people, including at least one who is very involved in the industry, have fretted aloud about the looming danger of A.I. and especially &#8220;Artificial General Intelligence&#8221; &#8212; whereby a computerized system goes beyond voice and face recognition, translating languages, playing chess, answering an automated phone system, or operating a car and through an algorithmic perspective has something akin to consciousness. (They call this &#8220;deep neural networking.&#8221;) Could machines one day evolve to the point of replicating themselves and creating totally new systems &#8212; develop imagination?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">&#8220;In the next 25 years,&#8221;<\/span> it went on to say, &#8220;A.I. will evolve to the point where it will know more on an intellectual level than any human. In the next fifty or one hundred years, an A.I. might know more than the entire population of the planet put together. At that point, there are serious questions to ask about whether this A.I. \u2014 which could design and program additional A.I. programs all on its own, read data from an almost infinite number of data sources, and control almost every connected device on the planet \u2014 will somehow rise in status to become more like a god, something that can write its own bible and draw humans to worship it.&#8221;<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/collective-consciousness-replace-god-author-dan-brown-120033225.html\">Here&#8217;s from Reuters<\/a><\/span> a few days ago: &#8220;Humanity no longer needs God but may with the help of artificial intelligence develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfills the role of religion, U.S. author Dan Brown said on Thursday.&#8221;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">It&#8217;s hard to know how much concern to place in that prospect (won&#8217;t humans always keep a step ahead?), but with the swift pace of technology, and the stunning progress of microchips, many things seem possible that a few years ago were in the realm of sci-fi.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Musk has warned that Google, for example, could have perfectly good intentions in its A.I. research but still &#8220;produce something evil by accident,&#8221; including &#8220;a fleet of robots&#8221; capable of controlling &#8212; or destroying &#8212; mankind.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2017\/03\/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">Warns Musk:<\/span><\/a><\/span> &#8220;You know all those stories where there\u2019s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he\u2019s like, yeah, he\u2019s sure he can control the demon? Doesn\u2019t work out.\u201d <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong><em>Naturally<\/em>, many skeptical high-techies find Musk\u2019s concerns so amusing and paranoid that they now return to their labs after a break saying things like, \u201cO.K., let\u2019s get back to work summoning.\u201d Perhaps one day it will prove not so funny.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/nintchdbpict000354985276.jpg?strip=all&amp;w=640\" alt=\" Despite the risks, Putin said AI has 'colossal opportunities'. File picture showing what robots could look like in the future\" width=\"203\" height=\"305\" \/>That &#8220;super-robots&#8221; could be used in the military has even Vladimir Putin concerned.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content article__content--intro\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Putin has claimed genetically-modified super soldiers \u201cworse than a nuclear bomb\u201d may soon become a reality.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">The\u00a0 Russian President fretted to a crowd of students about the prospect of an army of trained killers incapable of feeling &#8220;pain or fear\u201d much like the characters in 1992 action movie <em>Universal Soldier.<\/em> &#8220;He revealed that scientists are close to breaking the genetic code which would enable them to create &#8216;a human with pre-designed characteristics,'&#8221; said the London <em>Sun.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Realize that, as far-fetched as it sounds, President Putin is a former KGB operative, a lieutenant colonel in foreign intelligence, with access, obviously, to technological secrets we don&#8217;t know about &#8212; secrets from any number of countries (especially his own).<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; color: #ff0000;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">An A.I. Anti-Christ?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">More likely, a personage of evil who would <em>control<\/em> an army of super-robots or some other manifestation of high-tech as well as so many internet servers and cyber systems and bio-tech systems that nothing could be done in any realm without his ability to reach out and control or quash it. If a world dictator arrives in that way, he will orchestrate high-tech (including perhaps implanted microchips) with a heavy hand.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><em>\u00a0[resources: <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritdaily.com\/retreatlongisland.htm\">Michael Brown retreat, Long Island, November 11<\/a><\/span>]<\/em><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/10\/02\/an-ai-god-will-emerge-by-2042-and-write-its-own-bible-will-you-worship-it\/<\/p>\n<div class=\"gsp_post_data\" \r\n\t            data-post_type=\"post\" \r\n\t            data-cat=\"commentary\" \r\n\t            data-modified=\"120\"\r\n\t            data-created=\"1507298921\"\r\n\t            data-title=\"Technological Anti-Christ\" \r\n\t            data-home=\"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When most people think of an anti-christ, it&#8217;s as a &#8220;personage of evil&#8221;: some prominent human imbued with evil or.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1303,1302,1301],"class_list":{"0":"post-10956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-commentary","7":"tag-anti-christ","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-musk","10":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}