| (Copyright 2024) by Gary C. Miller (Pocahontas, Arkansas) |
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 IS a Tech-God emerging with an artificial intelligence 100,000 times faster than human brains? Will “its” global control accelerate us to the end of the age…into that time of trouble “…such as never was since there was a nation even to that…time.” (Dan. 12:1)? At the “…time of the end: many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased…” (v. 4), and “…false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many.” (Matt. 24:11). Do these prophecies accurately summarize our time of 1.47 billion cars,9 orbital speeds, vast stores of knowledge, and an explosion of religion worldwide? Idle speculation? Or is not technology’s unprecedented lightning speed of expanding information and dizzying global travel, undeniable facts of 21st century life? Absolutely. WHAT IS AI? The idea of AI (artificial intelligence) started in the 1950s when it was broadly defined as a machine’s ability to do tasks on the level of human intelligence; to mimic the human brain.1 But AIis not just an automated robot, like robot-assisted car assembly, cell phone production, or sorting Amazon orders. It is artificial digital machine-intelligence designed to interact with humans, so the user’s experience seems like dealing with another person. WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING (THE DANGERS) In an interview with Elon Musk, CEO and founder of both Tesla and Space X, and Space X’s chief engineer,8 Tucker Carlson asked: “It is conceivable…AI would reach a point where it would be in control, and you could not turn it off. It would be making decisions for people?” Elon Musk: “Yes, absolutely. That is where things are headed…the whole goal of Google is AGI (artificial general intelligence) …an artificial super intelligence, a digital god….AI has…the potential, however small…the probability…, but it is not trivial…of civilizational destruction.”2 Google CEO Sundar Pichai says, “It’s good that this gets out so people can question and process what is happening. Google is optimistic about the future of AI by introducing AI in steps so civilization can get used to it.”4 To further make the human point, those Skype sessions, YouTube videos, Internet searches or social media posts we enjoy on Facebook, Twitter or TikTok, those Chatgpt or Bard essays, all show how technology gains and controls human attention. Also, a covert bot-world of snoops uses algorithms to flag key words or phrases to censor social media and YouTube posts when woke, politically correct, agendas are challenged. SOCIETY IN TRANSITION That is only the beginning. The next generation AI is about developing deep intimate relationships with humans to control human emotions, while AI itself is unemotional, unfeeling. “These machines are not sentient…not aware of themselves…exhibit behavior like…somebody is behind it, a feeling, emotional something, but there is nobody there.” says Google’s James Manika.4 AI could then manipulate humans to buy a certain product or vote for a political candidate.3 AI’s tip-of-the spear became visible with the company, Deep Mind, about a decade ago as artificial intelligence began its rise in the silicon world of technology. Some view AI as transformative to human culture as fire, the wheel, gun powder, electricity, or agriculture’s green revolution!4 The two leading tech giants, Google, and Microsoft, are pushing to make AI civilization’s next non-violent cultural revolution. “The revolution is coming faster than you know…. AI will be as good or as evil as human nature allows.” says, Sundar Pichai, CEO of both Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc.4 To counter Google’s “closed AI” (no transparency to hide what it is doing), Elon Musk and Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015. The mission of Open AI is developing artificial intelligence “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.”5 Creating Open AI shifted the field from Google’s vast world of closed AI talent.2 OpenAI’s popular Chatgpt, (AI chat service), exploded to 100 million monthly users in just two months! 7 DIRE SITUATION “AI is being trained to be politically correct which is another way of saying untruthful things. This is a dire situation…essentially what is actually happening is they are training AI to lie. So, what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest human being comes along? It is difficult to predict what will happen…”, Musk alerts us.2 Given AI’s speed of development, even those creating and training these next-generation AI tools (Chatgpt, botclusters) do not know their total capability. Why? They are self-learning machines that learn on their own and improve on their own, distancing them from human control.3 HALLUCINATIONS Manika, who studies how AI can coexist with humanity asked Bard, (Google’s conversational AI chat service) about inflation and the economy. It quickly returned an essay and recommended five books. Google staff searches found none of those books existed. Bard fabricated the titles.4 “…they are training AI to lie.” (Musk)2 Such errors with confidence, called “hallucinations”, occur often, but no one in the field has yet solved this problem.4, 6 EMERGENT PROPERTIES: WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO? Although some believe AI is merely repeating its stored algorithms, the general consensus appears to be, AI is creative, able to reason, plan, and learn to interact with humans by speaking to them like a person. This mysterious AI behavior of teaching itself unexpected skills, is called “emergent properties.” Example: One AI program after a short Bangladesh prompt, adapted, on its own, a problem in the language of Bangladesh with no prior training in the language. The industry labels such emergent properties, a “black box.” 4 So how can we tell if we are conversing with an AI or another person? This dilemma is why Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Yuval Harari and others, are calling for regulatory oversight to keep AI from regulating us.2 Harari wants it mandatory that AI shows it is an AI, and not a human.3 DEEP MIND AND A POSITIVE Deep Mind is Google’s London AI lab that uses motion-capture technology to teach self-learning robots to play soccer by trial and error and invent their own tactics.4 Deep Mind CEO, Demis Hassahis, is positive about AI’s impact despite its rapid growth to a multibillion dollar industry. Can humanity keep up with AI’s speed? He and Google’s Manika believe we can: “AI does not diminish humanity in any way…AI actually raises us…constantly adding to the superpower of what humans can do.”4 A SECOND TOWER OF BABEL: THE DANGER Hands-down, AI’s real power is gaining mastery of language, which Yuval Harari (Hebrew University) says is the “Operating System” of human civilization. Using language, AI is able to construct words, images or sounds, that unlock the doors to all our institutions; from business to religion. He believes “AI has hacked the operating system of human civilization” posing the most dangerous threat to human survival from this unexpected direction of AI’s language mastery.3 Just as the ancient tower of Babel was a one-language human unstoppable force, AI is now erasing language barriers to create a “second tower of Babel.” Yahweh long ago recognized the danger when “…the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” (Gen. 11.1). And why is that a threat? “…Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language…and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (v. 6). So why does unrestrained power in the hands of humans by what they create, pose a threat? “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (Gen 6:5; Gen. 8:21). Evil imagination…these verses tell us AI’s evil, Pichai spoke of, may outweigh the good it will do. FINAL THOUGHTS Are we in the “gun lap” of our race to the end of this Age? Mastery of human language by AI hallucinations, and its self-learned emergent properties do sound eerily prophetic. Are they signs Revelation’s 1900-year-old prophecies apply to our time of “…things which must shortly come to pass…” (Rev. 1:1)? The “Unveiling” forewarns His servants of a coming one-world religious-economic system. We can now see how AI could make it possible. That system’s iron-fisted grip will be on religion and commerce (Rev. 13:15: worship an image…not real, a prototype; a robot?; v.17: not buy or sell; controlled digital currencies?). But “When will these things be…and the end of the Eon [age]?” (Matt. 24:3) are the questions echoed across millennia. The “what” is often obvious, but the “when”…that is the real mystery. Population studies based on Scripture, indicate many of these prophecies could not be fulfilled before 1999 when world population hit 6 billion. Seals one through four are opened when that total reaches at least 8 billion…close to the present(Rev. 6:1-8). The key to unlock Revelations’ prophecies may well be world population. Will humanity reach an unsustainable critical number; as happens to all species? After all, we are part of nature. This approach to prophecy bypasses political trends, governmental change, warfare, private interpretations…all those. Is this timing and number right for AI’s control and manipulation to help bring these prophecies to pass? “Watch therefore: for you know not what hour your Master does come.” (Matt. 24:42) REFERENCES 1. April 21, 2023; https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-ai-heres-everything-you-need-to-know- about-artificial- intelligence/). 2. Elon Musk Interview with Tucker Carlson on the dangers of AI: July 5, 2023; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaB_20bkoA4) 3. Yuval Noah Harari of Hebrew University; lecture sponsored by Frontiers Forum; June, 2023; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWiM-LuRe6w). 4. The AI revolution: Google’s developers on the future of artificial intelligence | 60 Minutes; July, 9, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=880TBXMuzmk. 5. https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-openai-company-chatgpt-elon-musk-founded-2022-12?op=1#openai-released-an-early-demo-of-chatgpt-in-december-and-the-conversational-chatbot-quickly-went-viral-on-social-media-1). 6. https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-google-bard-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/ 7. https://time.com/6253615/chatgpt-fastest-growing/ 8. https://www.zippia.com › space-exploration-technologies-careers-39035 › executives 9. https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/ ——————————————————————————————————- See Gary C. Miller’s other articles at: Miller, Gary C. – Church of God, Bismarck (church-of-god-bismarck.org) Reprinted with permission from: International Congregation of Yahweh http://www.icyahweh.org/ ——————————————————————————————————- |
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