AI Apocalypse

On this blog, we carried out a review of Thorleif Boman’s book on the differences between Hebrew and Hellenistic thinking (search terms “HTCG” or “Boman”), the underlying epistemology of each culture. The West in general is Hellenized, of course. Unlike every previous culture and civilization in human history, the West assumes itself as the human default, at the same time being the most unlike every previous culture and civilization before it. Indeed, all the others have more in common to each other than any or all of them have with the West.

What distinguishes the West is the pretense of objectivity — everything is depersonalized. No other civilization in human history has imagined a universe that is so impersonal, so devoid of life. John in his revelation makes this a criticism in the form of the Beast. While the imagery John uses does share some of the mixing of attributes so well recognized from the Ancient Near East, the one John depicts is unique in the choice of attributes. That’s because it is meant to portray something new and different in history. A creature of Satan’s devising, it is utterly mindless in its rapacious appetite for consuming human life and every good gift from God.

No other culture has ever imagined a power that stands independent of the gods. In the West, we have this thing that we claim exists on its own authority, variously imagined as reason, law, etc. It has no character because it does not live, yet is omnipotent and every god must bow the knee. In the structure of western thought and assumptions about reality, we hold Jehovah accountable to this beast, judging His revelation by the standards we imagine we find in it. We say that God is permitted to do this, but cannot do that.

John portrayed this Beast as a horror that spun off more horrors, all empowered by Satan. He saw it coming, telling us how it would seek to destroy covenant faith, the submission to Christ as Lord (the Woman, the Bride of Christ), by imposing the final greatest bondage of the human race. Nothing that comes after would be a greater threat to faith.

The Beast has yet a bit of morphing ahead of it, adding a fresh attribute that will seem almost like a whole new creature — AI. I want you to notice that AI is incapable of thinking independently. It is currently nothing more than a very large algorithm that processes human chatter so that it can generate more chatter. It is wholly unconscious of the ideas represented by that chatter. Thus, it cannot actually make decisions. This won’t keep fools from trying to employ it for decision-making.

It can only emulate poorly the process of actually thinking. Thinking machines would require a wholly different approach, plus technology that doesn’t exist. What I’m suggesting here is a firm conviction that no matter what TPTB try to tell us, genuine full-blown AI will never exist. Rather, we will be told it does as a justification for compelling us to kneel under its power. And because it is so thoroughly incapable of actually thinking, it will easily be the most ghastly oppression humans have ever seen.

I recall a couple of decades ago when there was a rash of laptop thefts of government officials. The machines rarely showed up again for sale; these were not simply thefts of hardware. Each of these laptops contained substantial databases of things the sponsoring agencies were tracking. It was the data that was the objective of this activity. We know this because the thefts were supported by whole staffs of people on the ground interfering with pursuit, preventing anyone from recovering the stolen laptops. These were espionage operations.

Do you recall the big deal made over the US government’s theft of the PROMIS software from Inslaw? That was the first pass at using computers and data to track massive numbers of humans. Then came other data processing software capable of cross referencing huge databases, intended to inform executive decisions about economics and policy. Today we have Palantir and other Big Tech companies collating all the databases of government and private institutions, building a framework for tracking every human on the planet. It has started here in the US and is already spreading across the globe. The obvious point of all this is to discover and track every human with any will or talent for independent thought.

There’s a very good explanation why everyone who could or might resist is not simply eliminated right away. The fundamental assumption of the West is that there is no Spirit Realm and that there is no such thing as conviction that drives humans from a higher realm. Every human is malleable. And since before WW2, our bureaucratic government system has operated under the assumption that every citizen is nothing more than an economic asset. Every policy decision is based on the calculus of how much economic activity can be squeezed out of each human.

This is more diabolical than you might expect; don’t think in simplistic terms. Even disabled people have a use — the people who love them will be driven to greater economic activity in order to support them. Family households will work and spend money on children, pets and indigent family members. It’s all very cynical. Yes, the welfare system will try to counsel clients and compel them to make certain kinds of decisions, but the system is fully aware of human nature in terms of economic behavior.

Now, imagine all of this being managed by AI. This horror, and the natural human resistance to it, will also provoke a new religion, insisting that it is God. This is the apocalypse John foresaw. The ultimate persecution of faith, particularly here in the US, will arise from this direction.

There won’t be much we can do about it. On an individual level, some of us will be moved to various forms of resistance and even some small scale victories, but the overall long term trends will not be altered. But the reason I point this out now is because some functions of human government are already being delivered over to this Beast. This is the source of persecution we will face here in the US. It has nothing to do with which party controls which offices of government. It has been forming for a very long time already, and it just so happens that the current administration will be the one to unleash this awful thing.