Is That You Antichrist?

 

One of the most frustrating things that evangelicals, especially those influenced by modern American and end times evangelicalism (which is many modern Baptists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, independent churches, etc, etc) do is whenever there is a new technology revealed, they instantly start arguing that this is the beast’s tool to build the beasts system and the beast will use this technology to control us all.

I have been around long enough to see this thinking applied to everything from things like barcodes, to credit-cards, to mobile phones, to bitcoin and more. The big one that this thinking is now being applied to is AI.

But now that it is becoming increasingly clear that AI is going to turn out to fall far short of the Big Tech Bro predictions, as it always was, again the evangelical church is going to have egg on its face. The tech bros were always simply trying to upsell their product, which is why they sold it to people in the apocalyptic world changing terms they did. Many of the predictions, made by evangelicals, about AI being the final key to the antichrist system will again make the evangelical church look ridiculous. We have to be better guys, much better.

AI is becoming slightly more useful with every update. But every big tech company is also haemorrhaging money quickly, because achieving that rise of utility is being outweighed by the cost of the infrastructure needed to get those gains, and not enough revenue to offset those costs. In other words, the AI tech companies are increasing their debt, to outcompete each other, but they are not able to bring in enough money to cover those debts. On top of this the tech base they are relying on to produce the computing power is quickly perishing. Graphics cards in data centres don't last as long as people think, only a few years. You might still be able to use your 1080 TI to run Steam games on medium settings in a rig you bought 10 years ago, but AI data centres run 24/7 at a high output, that chews through the technology they rely on. Hence, the costs of improving AI are increasing and the returns are not increasing fast enough. AI investment is heading for a big downturn.

This does not mean AI won’t have its uses. Look at how Castalia House is using it to produce new translations of books on a daily basis. There are other ways it can be used as a research assistant, to speed up code writing, to increase the writing output for talented writers, and in many other ways. But it also gets things wrong often, and needs a lot of oversight, correction and direction.  

In other words, AI will just turn out to be a very useful personal assistance tool, that people will only trust with certain tasks, because we have all seen how unreliable it can be in a host of circumstances. Even the ways it is being used in law enforcement are coming under scrutiny and causing legal cases because AI is shown often to be unreliable, resulting in many fines being overturned in reviews.

Already we see a lot of people mock AI content as inferior. Who here even bothers to read a post on social media, or in a blog, once you work out that the person wrote it with AI? You skip it, don’t you. I do. Most people who use AI also won't pay for it, and so the companies are building liabilities they cannot cover, on a technology that many people are having bad experiences with. It will improve over time, but it is not going to be the omniscient danger many have predicted it to be.  

Don't get me wrong, I agree with people who are concerned with how modern governments are using technology to strip away our rights, freedoms and privacy. Be ever vigilant and vocal about that.

But the key to the antichrist system is not a technology, it is a spirit which, 1) seeks to take the place of the Lord Jesus, 2) seeks to deny the true Lord Jesus, 3) convinces people to worship it and offer their lives to it. Tech is not required for that. Versions of this antichrist spirit and system existed in the 1st century, and have in every century since.

Christians have to stop automatically assuming every new technology is the beast’s technology. Technology is basically morally neutral. It is the heart of man that can direct it towards evil or towards good. You can use AI to create an incredible worship song for the Lord or you can use it for nefarious purposes. It is the heart of mankind that is the real issue, along with the spiritual realm of darkness.

There are antichrists everywhere. By that I mean that there are people everywhere who deny Christ and proclaim false religions in the place of his true religion. Be more on guard for that. In fact, that is our bigger concern, and that kind of evil has always been pervasive in our world.

Interestingly, the tech moguls kind of are treated by many people like modern deities, or at least demi-gods, who will lead us into the promise land of the future tech utopia. Many of them have obviously believed their own hype, and so the massive fall of much of their industry is exactly what we should expect. And that tech depression is coming. In fact, it is likely already here. Pride comes before a massive fall. They thought the key to creating intelligence was ram and ever increasing CPU power. But that is just the key to burning through electricity fast and churning out slop videos and photos. Intelligence is created by a Higher Intelligence, and he looks at the pride of man and laughs (cf. Psalm 2).

This does not mean that AI won't be of use. It will be very useful for some applications. It does not mean it won't take away some jobs, it will, as all disruptive technologies do. But like all other tech it will not achieve all of what was promised, it will fall short of its makers claims, and it will turn out to be a pretty mundane thing in a few years, that many people have incorporated into their everyday life.

Beware the constant “is this the antichrist tech” thinking. Be more concerned about how sinful politicians and sinful tech barons can use any technology to push autocratic ends. That is something to be vigilant of. But then that issue has existed long before silicone was transformed in such a way that helped the rocks cry out.