AI and the Image of the Beast at the End of the World

Essays on the evils of AI are a dime a dozen, but this report from BusinessInsider.com (via the Children’s Health Defense web site) seemed to reveal something new:

Billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen — who has long been bullish on the tech — thinks AI is a lifelong “ally” for the children of tomorrow as they both grow up together.

 

Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast last Wednesday, Andreessen shared how he had introduced his 8-year-old son to the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT as an educational tool.

 

“The AI that my 8-year-old is gonna have by the time he’s 20, it’s gonna have had 12 years of experience with him, and so it will have grown up with him. It will know everything he’s ever done.” Andreessen said. “It’ll know what he wants.”

 

The cofounder of namesake VC firm Andreessen Horowitz talked about how AI can serve as a lifelong “ally” for his son and future generations. “They’ll have basically a partner whose goal in life will be to make them as happy and satisfied and successful as possible.”

This should alarm Orthodox Christians.  Every child, Orthodox or not, receives a Guardian Angel at his conception.  Furthermore, every Orthodox child, at his baptism, receives a Patron Saint.  These holy protectors, Guardian Angels and Patron Saints, are the God-given ‘allies’ with whom Orthodox children ‘grow up together’, who ‘know everything they’ve ever done’, who are their ‘partners’ whose ‘goal in life’ is not to give the children what will make them ‘happy, satisfied, and successful’ in a worldly sense but who will lead them safely through fallen earthly life to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But our Big Tech overlords, per the above, are intent on replacing the heavenly protectors of Orthodox children with an AI simulacrum.  The AI allies are a return to the demonic soothsayers that the Old Testament Law proscribed.  Some words from the Holy Elder Cleopa Ilie of Romania seem to bear this out.  Rather than trusting in God’s will for us as revealed through the revelations of the saints and angels, etc., unbelievers turn to the spirits of the dead (i.e., demons) and mediums in order to know what path to walk in life.  Elder Cleopa writes:

‘The conjurors have the aim and the need to call upon the spirits of the dead (I believe, however, that in fact they are spirits of demons which appear in the form of the spirits of the dead) in order that they may reveal to them certain secrets that relate to the future of the dead or other curiosities forbidden by the law of God.  Listen to what Holy Scripture has to say:  “And when they shall say unto you, seek unto the necromancers and unto the soothsayers, who chirp and who mutter, Shall not a people seek unto their God?  On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?  To the law and the testimony!  If they speak not according to this word, for them there is no daybreak’ (Isaiah 8:19-20; The Truth of Our Faith, 3rd edn., Peter Alban Heers translator & editor, London, Ontario, Uncut Mountain Press, 2007, pgs. 234-5).

These words are very apt, for what do our AI chatbots do but ‘chirp and mutter’ revelations to people who are not content with what the All-Holy Trinity has revealed to us?  Elder Cleopa warns us about this:  ‘Indeed, in the Divine Revelation that was given to us with Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition we lack nothing in the way of knowing about our salvation, nor do we have need to seek from the dead – or better, the demons [or even better, AI!—W.G.] – something favourable to our salvation’ (p. 235).

He adds to this the following:

When God sends us a prophet and it is not revealed to us immediately, this means that he does not want to make other disclosures, knowing that they won’t be profitable for us.  When someone who prophesies is not from God, without a doubt he is from the Devil, as were the false-prophets referred to in Scripture.  They announced false visions, vanities, and preposterous prophecies relative to the condition of their heart.  When they actually do tell us the truth, we should not believe it, since they don’t say it with the aim of benefiting anyone, but rather, from deceptiveness they seek to lead us into delusion.  Look at the girl with the unclean spirit of divination in the city of Philippi of Macedonia.  Everything that the evil spirit said through her mouth was true, and yet the Apostle Paul admonished it to keep silent, casting out the demonic spirit (Ibid.).

Again, this is instructive vis-à-vis AI – first, because we absolutely do want our gadgets to give us ‘immediate disclosures’ when we address them with questions, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of black magick; second, they often spit out ‘false’ and ‘preposterous’ answers; third, modern tech devices, though they may do some good things, will be used by the evil one to establish his Antichrist.  The Holy Elder Lawrence of Chernigov revealed this about our amazing glowing screens:

The God-pleasing Holy Elder used to say, “Blessed, and thrice-blessed is the man who does not desire, and who will not see the abominable face of the Antichrist. He who sees him and hears his blasphemous words, his promises of all earthly treasures, he will be deceived and will go to meet him and bow down to him. He will perish together with him and will burn in the eternal fire.”

 

They asked the Elder, “How will all this come to pass?” The holy Elder said with tears, “In the holy place, the abomination of desolation will stand. And it will show the foul seducers of the world. And they will be deceiving the people who have fallen away from God, and will perform false miracles. And after them, the Antichrist will appear. And the whole world will see him at the same time.”

 

Then the fathers asked the Elder, “Where in the holy place? In the church?” The Venerable one answered, “Not in the church, but in every house. In the corner, where the holy icons now stand and hang, there will stand captivating devices which will delude the people. Many will say, ‘We need to watch and listen to the news.’ And behold, in the news the Antichrist will appear.

Holy Elder Lawrence was speaking of television, but his warning is just as true, if not more so, of smartphones and other devices with their AI helpers.  They more and more resemble the prophecy from St. John’s vision, of the image of the beast that was given life by the lesser beast to murder those who refused to worship the first beast:

. . . and by the signs which it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast, it deceives those who dwell on earth, bidding them make an image for the beast which was wounded by the sword and yet lived; and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast should even speak, and to cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain (Revelation 13:14-15).

The resemblance of our AI ‘allies’ to conjuring mediums of Old Testament times would be hazardous enough to the salvation of men and women, but the situation is much worse than that.  Increasingly, it is becoming more dangerous to ‘stare into the lights.

But the God Lord has not left us adrift without guidance in these strange times.

Walt Garlington is an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland.  His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

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