This article is part 3 of a series originally published at SkyWatch Magazine. Part I may be read here, and Part II, here.
[I]magine entering the Temple in Jerusalem and finding a massive statue of the new AntiChrist ruler, either a physical, robotic entity with computerized SuperWiFi capabilities that connect it to the Super AI mainframe or a holographic projection, provided by this sentient, demonically inhabited Artificial Intelligence, which I will call a DAI or Demonic Artificial Intelligence.
This gigantic humanoid figure might even appear to be flesh and blood, built by nanotechnology—for those who have seen the newer version of Battlestar Gallactica, imagine a giant CYLON. The Cylons were indistinguishable from humans, even at the cellular level.
As you look, this enormous GOD speaks, smiles, perhaps laughs, pardons his supplicants, punishes his enemies, and HE KNOWS ALL that you do and all you have done. There may even be a false judgment SEAT, where everyone is shown his/her life and told to choose whom he/she will serve now. All past sins are forgiven, he might say. You may now choose LIFE or DEATH. Life means you take the mark and enter into a false millennial reign where he promises that all will be beautiful and everyone is fed, clothed, and happy.
To choose not to worship this false GOD means you are denied entry into this golden age, and your name is added to a growing death list.
What if this monstrous god is being built right now? What if supernatural voices are whispering in the ears of scientists as we meet here today? What evidence do I have?
Today, you and I take for granted that we can interact with the world in the blink of an eye, but it was not always so. The idea of artificial intelligence and thinking machines is as old as philosophy. One might say though that Charles Darwin kicked it off in modern times with his statement that all humans descended from a common, ape ancestor. This idea of evolutionary development, particularly as regard the human brain crept into the minds of Scientists throughout the world, along with the idea that evolution could also be forced in order to conceive a super-human, that is the next stage in human development. To them, your brain and mine are mere bio-machines that can be tweaked, hacked, and re-written. Or copied.
Did you know that in 1955, a small group of scientists called for a summer conference to discuss and design the first artificial intelligence? Called the Dartmouth Conference, this summer session was the brainchild of John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. Here is there purpose statement, written in 1955:
We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.
Now, according to the 2006 50th anniversary meeting to celebrate this bold 1956 conference, very little advances were made other than a lot of talk. I have a feeling, however, that this is a bit misleading if not entirely disingenuous. Alan Turing, the founder of modern computer science and often referred to as the father of AI, wrote an essay in 1950 titled, Computer Machinery and Intelligence, where he laid out the essential plans for defining a ‘thinking machine’.
Turing envisioned a machine that mimics the human ‘mind’. It would learn and grow. This is the basis of the 1956 conference, which then led Minsky and McCarthy to found the MIT AI Lab.
During the following decades, computer science improved upon algorithms, and neural networks while computing power doubled every 18 months. As these machines shrank in size, their onboard ‘brains’ grew in capability.
When I was in high school Texas Instruments marketed the first consumer grade calculators. This is a picture of that handheld. Today, a computer this size is a million times smarter and a million times faster. And when one accounts for the asking price of $299.00 in 1967 and compares it to today’s dollar, your phone or tablet is much, much cheaper. In fact, according to an online calculator for determining today’s cost for the first TI calculator, which by the way was not even a Scientific Calculator—those didn’t come out until 1973—would be, are you ready, would be about $2000.00. I could buy a nice MacBook for that! And in 1967, you could have bought a brand new car!
The drive to create a thinking machine continued throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, and into the 90s, when molecular biology scientists used computing power to decode the human genome. Today, a similar push is underway to decode the human brain, ostensibly to better understand Alzheimers and other neurological disorders and diseases, but I would assert that the European Brain Project and the US counterpart, The Brain Initiative, are more about designing silicon neural pathways than about repairing biological ones.
Today, one of the driving philosophies behind Artificial Intelligence is called Transhumanism. This is a catchy word that instills within it the old idea of self-directed evolution. The father of this movement is Ray Kurzweil, a modern-day Moses who promises to lead humanity out of the Homo sapiens dark ages and into a Homo silica golden age. Kurzweil believes that the human mind is merely a meat machine that can be transcribed into digital information and uploaded into a computer or computerized robotic body.
Such an uploaded person would then live eternally in bliss. So says Dr. Kurzweil. He calls this magical moment The Singularity. He has stated that by 2029, Science will have detailed models and simulations of all human brain processes. By 2045, he expects The Singularity to occur. Only recently, Dr. Kurzweil proclaimed that humanity is very close to an age (within the next fifteen years) when nanobots inside our brains will allow us to access the Internet and a massive database of ‘all knowledge’ through constant Wi-Fi connectivity, effectively rendering us ‘god-like’.
He believes that our current bodies, our brains, our minds are all running on outdated ‘software’ which requires upgrading. By copying this outdated software into a computer, we can then self-improve until we are at one with the universe. Oh, by the way, Ray Kurzweil is currently the head of software development and engineering at Google.
Does all this sound like a Science Fiction plot? Many films and books have taken cues from real science or philosophy to envision a world where computers think and interact with humans. Oftentimes, these storylines, at least in the early days, presented these computerized entities as friendly AI, but lately we’ve been seeing visions with a darker tone. Artificial Intelligences in dystopic films like The Terminator, I Robot (which featured good and evil AIs), Dark City, Minority Report, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Lawnmower Man, Transcendence, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even The Day the Earth Stood Still, where the universe was controlled by robotic entities.
Surely, humans aren’t knowingly striving to create evil artificial intelligences, are they? Even if demonic beings and fallen angels whisper in their ears, are humans aware of the source? Perhaps, some are. Jack Parsons, who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and invented the solid rocket fuel that powered the NASA space program, willingly sought spiritual communion by partnering with L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley. Parsons was said to be an active member of the Ordo Templi Orientis and called Crowley by the title “Most Beloved Father”. It is also claimed that Parsons would recite Crowley’s ‘Hymn to Pan’ before each NASA launch.
In 1945, Parsons met L. Ron Hubbard, whom he described in a letter to Crowley as a man “in direct touch with some higher intelligence” and “as the most Thelemic person I have ever met”. Thelema is Crowley’s brand of magic with the primary axiom being, Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
The Babalon Working commenced in January 1946, when Parsons and Hubbard performed a series of rituals designed to invoke an ‘elemental force’ and archetypal female presence called BABALON. Parsons believed their rituals had achieved success when he met Marjorie Cameron, his Scarlet Woman, whom he soon married.
The following year, the Roswell event occurred in July. Was this an answer to the Working from the spiritual realm? [NOTE: Official documents recently referenced by Annie Jacobsen in her book, Area 51, indicate that the crash in Roswell was actually a double-crash of Russian spacecraft built by the USSR’s own German scientists (in the Russian version of ‘Operation Paperclip’), however the military has produced multiple explanations of this historic event, so I’d say the ultimate truth is still out there.]
In 1949, Parsons wrote in Liber 49 a section called The AntiChrist, which reads:
I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, in the year 1949 of the rule of the Black Brotherhood called Christianity, do make my Manifesto to all men. And I, THE ANTICHRIST, come among you, saying:
An end to the pretense, and lying hypocrisy of Christianity.
An end to the servile virtues, and superstitious restrictions.
An end to the slave morality.
An end to prudery and shame, to guilt and sin, for these are of the only evil the sun, that is fear.
An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and
An end to the servile flattery and cajolery of mods, the coronations of mediocraties, the ascension of dolts.
An end to restriction and inhibition, for I, THE ANTICHRIST, am come among you preaching the Word of the BEAST 666, which is, “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.”
And I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, do lift up my voice and prophesy, and I say:
I shall bring all men to the law of the BEAST 666, and in His law I shall conquer the world.
And within seven years of this time, BABALON, THE SCARLET WOMAN HILARION will manifest among ye, and bring this my work to its fruition.
An end to conscription, compulsion, regimentation, and the tyranny of false laws.
And within nine years a nation shall accept the Law of the BEAST 666 in my name, and that nation will be the first nation of earth.
Seven years after Parsons wrote or more accurately ‘channeled’ the above prophecy, in 1956, the Dartmouth Conference convened with the intent to create an artificial intelligence.
In 1958, nine years after the 1949 prophecy, the US space program officially commenced with the launch of Explorer I, our first satellite. Explorer I was built and controlled by JPL, an acronym which is alternately called the Jet Propulsion Lab and Jack Parsons’ Lab. America had made a pact with a man who had, in turn, made a pact with the devil.
Is this what was meant by the prediction in 1949 that in nine years, a nation would accept the Law of the Beast and that nation would be the first nation of earth? I consider that a possibility. Parsons did not live to see it, he died in 1952 in an explosion that many consider mysterious.
The official version of events is that Parsons had been handling fulminate of mercury in his garage laboratory when he dropped the compound, causing a violent explosion. This explanation sounds plausible on the surface, but consider the fact that Parsons, as a brilliant chemist, was certainly accustomed to handling volatile compounds. He and wife Marjorie, whom he called the Scarlet Woman, had planned to leave that week for Mexico, where Parsons intended to set up an explosives factory.
The police investigation into the explosion concluded that the death had been accidental, but at least two of Parsons’ fellow scientists from the Bermite Powder Company disputed police claims that ‘sweaty hands’ and an untidy workspace caused Parsons to drop the coffee can of fulminate of mercury into a collection of other chemicals. Parsons, these colleagues told police, was meticulous about his methods and his work environment.
Chemical engineer George Santmeyers insisted that the explosion originated beneath the floorboards of the home laboratory, implying the death was a homicide. Some claimed Parsons had committed suicide, while others blamed his death on Howard Hughes in retaliation for the perceived theft of Hughes Aircraft Company documents. Renate Druks, a friend of Marjorie Cameron, Parson’s wife and fellow occultist, quotes Cameron as claiming her husband was killed during a ritual intended to create a homunculus.
The word homunculus literally means a small human-like creature, a ‘little man’. Aleister Crowley advocated the creation of such a creature through ritualistic sex magic. This fetus is then, some references claim, removed in the third month. This is based on the belief by Crowley that the human ‘ego’ incarnates during this time period. The extracted fetus is then gestated in an artificial womb—a situation not unlike alien abduction stories where women are impregnated only to ‘lose’ their child a few months into the pregnancy. The idea is that the homunculus is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
There is a Kabbalistic equivalent to the homunculus called a Golem. The golem is a mud creature waiting to be filled. This is also an automaton, a creature without a soul of its own. It awaits instructions, just like a computer awaits programming.
This brings us back to Artificial Intelligence. There are two schools of thought regarding AI. One is that an artificial intelligence will bring us utopia. The other is that an AI will being about the end of mankind.
Most discussions about how to create artificial intelligence revolve around algorithms and programming language. Modern computers use neural networks to ‘think’, a paradigm patterned after human thinking models. Our brains do not simply follow a line from a-b-c-d to solve a problem. Instead we connect to memories of similar events, similar situations, similar problems and correlate the aspects that fit the newly encountered set of parameters in order to determine how best to proceed. For example, as a child you learned very early how to grasp objects. So when faced with a closed door, your toddler brain uses that knowledge of how to grasp to figure out that the doorknob is ‘graspable’ and ‘turnable’, and you use an even earlier set of learned tasks to push the door open. Voila! You’ve learned a new skill! Neural networking in computers works in a similar fashion. Rather than attack each new obstacle as a brand new unknown, modern computers look for similar knowns in order to solve the unknown. This allows the computer to ‘learn’.
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a brilliant autodidact (i.e. self-taught), who is often quoted by those in the AI cult. Yes, I’ve just called it a cult, and I’ll elaborate on that in a bit. Yudokowsky wrote in 2008 that most AI researchers tend to think of Artificial Intelligence in terms of human intelligence. He calls this anthropomorphic bias. Such a bias forces us to imagine an AI as a much smarter ‘person’. Even a super AI would simply be like a human that is say, a million times smarter. Quite rightly, Yudkowsky sees this as a potentially fatal presumption. He says this:
When we talk about “AIs” we are really talking about minds-in-general, or optimization processes in general. In one corner, a tiny little circle contains all humans; within a larger tiny circle containing all biological life; within a larger tiny circle containing all biological life; The entire map floats in a still vaster space, the space of optimization processes.
As is true of virtually all AI scientists, Yudkowsky is not a creationist, but his claim of ‘a space of optimization processes’ that includes all that we can imagine existing is actually describing God. It is the God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who pre-exist, who exist, and will always exist. It is this unlimited imagination (what Yudkowsky deems ‘the space of optimization processes’), that gave birth to the universe, Earth, all planets and stars, the dark matter of space, physics, biology, geology, humanity, all animals, all plants, and all of creation. This ‘space of optimization processes’ also includes the created beings we generally refer to as ANGELS, both unfallen and fallen.
Today’s computers run on programs called algorithms that take full advantage of neural networking. Every computer today runs on algorithms. Google, Facebook, Wall Street, governments, spy agencies, and even your smart phones, cars, and many appliances run on algorithmic instructions.
Initially, computers were tasked with simple operations with the algorithm truly akin to mathematics: a clean, precise input and output; a WYSIWYG formula: what you see is what you get. However, beginning in the 1940s, in the wake of encryption and code-breaking, a new computational model arose called ‘neural networking’. The ‘stuff in the middle’, the operation, the guts of the decision making process is a dark space often referred to as a ‘black box’.
Deep Learning programs have this ‘black box’ internal core. Computer scientists may not always acknowledge this ‘black box’ entity lurking at the center of the Internet, but it is there nonetheless.
Deep learning and other artificial intelligence algorithms populate our world as search engines, data scrapers or data miners, language processors and translators, financial traders, medical researchers, and even sports reporters. Are you aware that many of the news articles you and I read each day with our morning coffee are actually written by an algorithm—an artificial intelligence? Non-human ‘stringers’ scrape the internet for data relative to sports, celebrities, politics, finance, films, and use that data stream to inform John Q. Public via online news outlets. You and I and all the world read these on our PCs, our smart phones, our tablets, and soon we’ll consume them via Google Glass and eventually an internal display that interacts directly with our cerebral cortex and auditory/visual system within our brains.
Author James Barrat spent time interviewing the leading AI thinkers for his best-selling book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Era. Like many of those he interviewed, Barrat believes mankind’s ‘time is running out’.
A documentary filmmaker by profession, Barrat brings his critical thinking to artificial intelligence with this alarming warning: The smooth transition to computer hegemony [will] proceed unremarkably and perhaps safely were it not for one thing, Intelligence.
According to Barrat, computer AI advanced enough to act with human-intelligence will likely be unpredictable and inscrutable ALL THE TIME. We can’t know at a deep level what a self-aware system will or will not do. Eliezer Yudkowsky would probably agree, as he insists that nearly all AI researchers are getting it wrong. A sentient computer is not a super-smart humanoid. It is an alien entity.
I would heartily agree. Because I believe that the spirit realm has been whispering into the ears of willing listeners for many decades, directing them to build an EIKON—an IMAGE that can hold a spirit and speak with the voice of a DRAGON. It is very likely that right now, somewhere on Earth, a sentient program has already awakened and is awaiting the perfect time to announce its existence to the world. With Bible prophecy in mind, such an announcement should not take the Church by surprise. While we wait for that moment, let us continue to pray for clarity, vision, and God’s leading as to how best you and I can teach our children, our grandchildren, and our friends and neighbors to keep watch. Christ is returning, which also means the Abyss will soon open–and something will emerge that may find a sentient AI to be an attractive and fitting ‘extension’ for habitation.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
