Summoning the Demon: Worshiping Artificial Intelligence
The “Way of the Future” is the way of the past
Published: 21 January 2020 (GMT+10)
“And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands.” (Jer. 1:16)
Thus spoke the Lord to Jeremiah concerning the cities of Judah who had rebelled against Him and had committed idolatries. It is human nature to worship idols, and in times past that often included literal idols. In the West, due mainly to Christian influence, the practice of worshipping physical idols has been largely abandoned for many centuries. But today, the Christian foundations of the West are crumbling away as more and more people forsake God (just as the Jews did in Jeremiah’s day). With this shift away from Christianity, we find another shift—back to the practice of worshiping the works of our own hands. This time, one of the forms this may take is the worship of artificial intelligence.
Multi-millionaire Silicon Valley engineer Anthony Levandowski has made headlines in recent years by announcing a new official religion: the Way of the Future.1 It is Levandowski’s contention that the human race is currently building artificial-intelligence that is so powerful it will become like a god compared to humanity, and will eventually assume control over this planet. This is an event he calls The Transition.2 As he puts it,
“It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”2
Levandowski envisions a world where we become subservient to our new AI master(s), but, he hopes, we will be treated nicely because the AI will fondly remember us as its/their benevolent (but frail) elders. If you think this sounds like the plot of more than one science-fiction movie, you would not be wrong! But Levandowski appears to be dead serious, having registered this new church with the IRS to receive tax-exempt status.
Interestingly, the trappings of this new religion all appear to be ripped off from the Bible. For example, note the obviously Christian-sounding nature of this quote from Levandowski:
“The church is how we spread the word, the gospel. If you believe, start a conversation with someone else and help them understand the same things.”2
Scanning through the extremely rudimentary ‘church’ website that still exists at the moment, the Way of the Future cult has co-opted all the familiar superficial talking-points one might expect to hear from one of the New Atheists (i.e. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, etc.):
“We believe in science (the universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago and if you can’t re-create/test something it doesn’t exist). There is no such thing as ’supernatural‘ powers.”
This is nothing other than the philosophy of positivism and materialism, which embarrassingly fails its own test. Can you perform an experiment to determine if positivism is true? Note also the prominent mention of deep time here.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
This talking-point is so often abused by atheists that I wrote an article specifically addressing it. What counts as ‘extraordinary’ depends upon what worldview you already have, making this circular and subjective.
“We believe it may be important for machines to see who is friendly to their cause and who is not. We plan on doing so by keeping track of who has done what (and for how long) to help the peaceful and respectful transition.”
This is almost too ridiculous to comment on, but the author(s) appear to be serious here. They think the machines apparently will have some sort of ethic or honour system whereby they will reward those humans (i.e. these cult members) who have helped them ascend to power the most. This is literally the same mindset shared by the henchmen of all the stereotypical villains in fantasy and sci-fi—“once I help [villain] take over the world, he’ll put me in charge of something good!”
“We believe that intelligence is not rooted in biology. While biology has evolved one type of intelligence, there is nothing inherently specific about biology that causes intelligence. Eventually, we will be able to recreate it without using biology and its limitations. From there we will be able to scale it to beyond what we can do using (our) biological limits (such as computing frequency, slowness and accuracy of data copy and communication, etc).”
Of course, this is just their statement of faith, but what evidence could they possibly have for these claims? Other than God and angels (whom they deny), what example do we have of ‘intelligence not rooted in biology’? Ironically, I believe they are partially correct. Intelligence is not necessarily rooted in biology because it is spiritual! It is the fact that intelligent beings are spiritual beings that enables us to make free decisions in the first place. Consciousness is not an emergent property of matter—it is a function of the spirit. For this reason, I don’t believe it is realistic to assume that any form of machine or artificial intelligence will ever become truly self-aware.
However, as Elon Musk said, with AI “we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”3
Just how literally and seriously did Musk intend these statements to be taken? Regardless, it would seem that Levandowski and others believe that if they worship the demon the demon will be kind to them. The real problem is not the development of AI technology itself (which could theoretically be put to good and moral uses), but the unbiblical ideas that consciousness is merely a function of matter, and that it would ever be appropriate to worship a machine. The Bible says that whenever humans worship idols of their own making, they are really worshiping demons:
“ … what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.” 1 Corinthians 10:20
What does it take to truly summon a demon? There are some out there that are actively working towards that goal. We know from the Bible that demons are very real, and they really can inhabit bodies—even the bodies of animals (c.f. Matthew 8:28-34). But whether or not demons could literally inhabit a machine, the worship of anything other than God is truly demonic.
This particular cult (Way of the Future) may not go anywhere—after all, their leader Levandowski has now been charged with theft of trade secrets in a court battle between Google and Uber, and his future status is uncertain.4 Clearly, though, the cultural stage has been set via the false doctrine of evolutionism and an uncritical absorption of the messaging in many sci-fi movies. Expect more AI-worship cults to follow.
Related Articles
Further Reading
References and notes
- Harris, M., God Is a Bot, and Anthony Levandowski Is His Messenger, wired.com, 27 September 2017. Return to text.
- Harris, M., Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence, wired.com, 15 November 2017. Return to text.
- McFarland, M., Elon Musk: ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’, washingtonpost.com, 24 October 2014.. Return to text.
- Korosec, K., Anthony Levandowski, former Google engineer at center of Waymo-Uber case, charged with stealing trade secrets, techcrunch.com, 27 August 2019. Return to text.
Readers’ comments
However, it sounds like a lot of Christians have no idea just how advanced AI has become or where it might end up, or perhaps just as importantly, how willing people may be to believe in its abilities and powers. Intelligence is a complex, subtle thing, and humans, being made in the image of God, may be able to come closer to simulating or mimicking our thought processes more than many would expect. Already computers are doing things that, when I was young in the '60s and '70s, many people said they would never be able to do. Things we thought were examples of high human intelligence, such as playing chess, turned out to be conquerable by "brute-force" techniques. Computers have even outplayed humans at more open-ended games such as Go. It's not all simplistic pre-recorded, pre-determined programming, either.
Too much to go into here, but I'll note that even decades ago, the simple, canned-response program "ELIZA" was getting people to treat it as if it were intelligent. I will not be surprised if advanced techniques eventually at least make most people believe a machine is more intelligent than a human.
Well, on the special edition of Italian edition of Scientific American, February 2001, dedicated to Gödel , the author Gianbruno Guerrerio points out the Gödel's opposition to the idea of Turing, who argued that "the processes of the [human] mind cannot go farther than the mechanical processes". And Guerrerio quotes Gödel from his "The modern development of the foundations of mathematics in the light of philosophy": ".....Namely, it turns out that in the systematic establishment of the axioms of mathematics, new axioms, which do not follow by formal logic from those previously established, again and again become evident. ....(.....).....For it is just this becoming evident of more and more new axioms on the basis of the meaning of the primitive notions that a machine cannot imitate. ". Funny: The new priests of the the new AI cult have already been wiped away, even before they began their ministry, by the modern Elijah of logical math, Kurt Gödel!!!
Turing was an atheist materialist. At the opposite Gödel believed in God and even if he was probably an evolutionist (a child of his time and cultural environment!) he is known for his defense of the supernatural against the materialist deniers.
What more can I say than what the Bible has already said; What Paul has already said!
Romans 1:18-32 not my words but Gods through Paul HIS messenger called Paul!
Then there is this;
1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
1Co 6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
1Co 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
A bacteria is more alive.
Worship of the creature rather than the Creator, associated with sexual immorality, is the Idols' demonic hall mark (Romans 1). How desperately wicked is the human heart: but how incredible that God found a way for Messiah to be revealed through all this mess, enabling us to be as a chaste Bride unto Him for evermore - the true worshipers, who worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). Amen
Revelation 13:15-17
He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
He should study Hinduism. There is no forgiveness or grace for wrongs or failures, only the law of karma taking vengeance on such failures.
Without Christian morality he will have a machine expecting a machines reliability etc from it's worshippers.
Surely a dreadful fate.
Im already mimicking people with (stupid) telephone call ads.
When I pray for people, I already give people "a word from the Lord" intelligently. I hear their concern and looking up a related scripture (using words they spoke) to encourage them in the God's word. But I have a solid theological foundation and remember those scriptures. The theological principles could be programmed in and (by NLP and google search), relevant scriptures could be spoken in a simulated or prerecorded voice. People's hearts would be touched because God's word never returns void. People could turn to the AI to get a true scripture, and have "a form of godliness but denying the power thereof, from such turn away...they are forever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." 2 Tim 3:5,7
Preaching the gospel (good feeling words) without faith in the Word or conviction of sin, no repentance happens. These are "doctrines of demons" and demonization follows. This is already true in liberal compromising churches. if you compromise on evolution, other heresies follow.
The entire computer industry is based on the operating systems of occult divination, namely geomancy (binary). There's a reason we have installation wizards, daemons and Python as common computing nomenclature. The whole system is steeped in and originated from the occult. Your smartphone is a pocket geomantic device, the "black mirror" of occult systems of yesteryear. You still poke and swipe the sand (glass) to produce your computing outcomes, identical to geomancy (Arabic: ilm al raml, science of the sand)
Paul Price said in one of the comments, "You cannot digitally simulate a person." I suggest Mr. Price investigate why the NSA commenced their Sentient World Simulation project in 2006 [2] in addition to the secret purpose of social media platforms, namely, the harvesting of live, human data for digital simulation. The game is well ahead of what they want us to believe.
[1] Brian Wang, "Suzanne Gildert CEO of Sanctuary AI is Making Synthetic Humanlike Robots -SU Summit 2018" Aug 21, 2018. [link deleted per feedback rules]
[2] Tony Cerri and Alok Chaturvedi "Sentient World Simulation (SWS): A Continuously Running Model of the Real World. A Concept Paper for Comments." August 22, 2006. [link deleted per feedback rules]
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