Last week, I noted the growing antipathy toward Sam Altman among top technologists. Sam Altman, the wannabe millionaire behind OpenAI and WorldCoin, is acting like he’s auditioning to be the Antichrist.
Today’s evidence: After much complaining, Elon Musk file a lawsuit Altman and OpenAI, the company he once backed, started promoting the open development of, you guessed it, artificial intelligence. Instead, Altman outmaneuvered Elon and turned the company into a lever he hoped would move the world behind the scenes at the highest levels of tech geopolitics.
But the bad news is that too many Americans, and too many techies, are still trying to convince us that instead of having our cake and eating it too, spiritually speaking, we will humble and quiet our passions and fears. It means that they think it is possible to create a “true” God. It is the point where we are ready to hear and accept God’s truth.
The case thus marks a milestone in Google’s increasingly high-stakes fight to “organize the world’s information,” as it puts it in a non-military arms race.Last summer I warned In on I will do it.
In other words, this bait will eat you anytime, anywhere. Its power is so powerful that even well-meaning engineers at the top of the food chain find themselves forced into a battle royale over its possession and use.
To understand the magnitude of this struggle, many Americans of a certain age tend to reach for “Lord of the Rings” metaphors. But that pseudo-Christian myth fails to capture the polytheistic dynamics that define today’s technological “clash of the titans.” Here, a struggle takes place between robot avatars of opposing pagan gods.
For years, eagle-eyed geeks have been claiming that AI engineers are actually AI engineers. building God. They’re wrong, but it’s not hard to see why. The only source of human authority over machines as powerful as the automated general-purpose simulators we call “artificial intelligence” is religious authority given by God. Mere human-made laws are not enough to speak authoritatively about the limits and purposes of apex technology.
The good news for America is that the most important laws we can pass regarding digital technology are the kinds of laws that best fit our Constitution. In other words, it is a law that protects the implied right to own and possess computer equipment, and to use and freely interact with computer equipment. Second, rather than deciding winners and losers or drawing arbitrary lines or limits.
But the bad news is that too many Americans, and too many techies, are still trying to convince us that instead of having our cake and eating it too, spiritually speaking, we will humble and quiet our passions and fears. It means that they think it is possible to create a “true” God. It is the point where we are ready to hear and accept God’s truth.
No matter how well-intentioned, this flawed intent manifests itself dramatically in the war over OpenAI. Mr. Musk’s excellent alternative to Altman’s automated supervillain routine is his Grok, his own AI, ostensibly dedicated to worshiping at the altar of truth. “In the next few weeks,” Elon recently said. announced“Glok will summarize these huge laws before they pass Congress, so you know what their real purpose is.”
Who could argue against that! But what is at stake unfolds at a higher spiritual level than the debate: the level of our ultimate identity, meaning, and purpose. “For every argument there is a counterargument,” wrote St. Gregory Palamas during the great philosophical debates of his time. “But who can be against life?”
Owning an AI that tells us things that our ostensible representatives won’t (or can’t) tell us about the laws they enact, without our knowledge or understanding, is a great way out of political slavery. It may feel like salvation. But the moment we accept AI as a source of truth, we succumb to the mental temptation to start asserting ourselves into believing that AI is: and it should beorigin of the truth we say Must trust! This AI will become the master feed that everyone from Musk to Altman to Google to Sam Bankman Fried has decided is the ultimate prize in this world.
An AI that doesn’t hate us? Are they programmed to lie and catechize us about woke doctrine? Don’t be afraid to ask the simple questions? It’s easy to put all of this off.
But the discernment needed to survive the spiritual warfare of the digital age is no easy feat. It’s about finding the divine strength you need to do the hardest things of all. Guard carefully our deep and mysterious hearts, lest anything false replace God’s love subtly penetrate. Today, there is no more insidiously persuasive alternative than an AI that promises to treat you the same way. you deserve.
Giving in to the temptation to make the biggest decisions about the most important things based on what you think you deserve is a tremendous, even fatal, spiritual defeat. It is an act of a lazy, proud, greedy will that reduces us to complete servitude. and outer life.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What better intention could there be than an AI to save us from every bad AI, from every falsehood and error? Only one Savior can do that, and He gives us prompts and answers. He expects a fierce fight to the end, not button-pushing.
