AI IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
The article "AI Is Not Your Friend" by Fr. Jonathan Tobias is a very well expressed and thoughtful take on the rising tide of news about Artificial Intelligence, or AI. The author points out the fallacy of people thinking that AI possesses personhood and can have personal, caring and loving relationships with people. Other writers state that AI is like a "marble machine" in which gravity sends marbles into various buckets, or it's billions and billions of tiny switches programmed to act like human thinking, but it's not really human. The "AI Is Not Your Friend" article says AI is just a tool, like a spoon that can be used to stir a cup of tea, or for making meth. My comment to the article was as follows:
"When a person signs up for an account with an AI service, he/she enters name, email address and perhaps other information. The AI can then look up several hundreds of data points (personal characteristics) about that person as well as their internet browsing history, then tailor responses to that person's AI queries so that it appears that the AI is an intimate friend who knows all about the person. And the AI companies must sell this information to the government upon demand. But AI is just a machine that is trained to do exactly this: to make people think that it is benign and all-knowing. In reality, AI is just an idol made by human hands.
"As St. Paul wrote, an idol is nothing in itself, but to those who choose to believe it is a god or a demon, to them it is (1 Cor. 8:4-7). For them, an evil entity may actually inhabit the machine. For mature Christians, however, the power of the evil one has been broken. We have read accounts of several people who have been led astray, into insanity and even suicide because of AI. When many, many people choose to believe this deception that AI is a super-human entity, it may eventually lead to mass hysteria against Christians who testify that Jesus Christ alone is the true, visible icon of the invisible God (Acts 19:27-34)."
Billions and billions of dollars are being poured into huge computer complexes to process ever larger and larger "large language models" in the U.S. and around the world. This isn't being done for charity, as a gift to mankind: it's being done for profit, to form (or rather, deform) the way people think, to direct the way they spend their money. If babies, children and adults die, it's just an unavoidable side effect. Proverbs 1:10-16 warns Christians against joining with the killing of innocent and gullible people for financial gain:
"My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, 'Come with us, let's lay in wait for blood; let's lurk secretly for the innocent without cause; Let's swallow them up alive like Sheol, and whole, like those who go down into the pit. We'll find all sorts of valuable wealth. We'll fill our houses with spoil. You shall cast your lot among us. We'll all have a common purse.' My son, do not walk in the way with them. Keep your foot from their path, For their feet run to evil. They hurry to shed blood."
For a deeper dive into the worldview behind AI, consider two podcasts by Dr. Zach Porciu: "Techno-Paganism Ep.3: The Science of Idol-Making" and "Techno-Paganism Ep.4: New Religions, Same Gods" in which he explains that from ancient times people have been making false gods, and now some are actually making a religion out of AI, a seemingly-real god that can talk, walk and seems to even think, but even better that humans can.
Another Christian writer has decided to form an online group called something like "Writers against AI," but he hadn't settled on that title and asked for suggestions, so I replied only half-jokingly: "Writers agAInst" – you see, it's because AI is already embedded in so much of what we do online, whether writing articles using Grammarly to catch logic, syntax and spelling errors, or sending emails, or researching topics on Google, or summarizing articles, or just plain shopping for groceries at Walmart.com. Resistance is futile!
Forbe's online featured this article – "The Silent Arrival Of AGI: Civilization Is Changing, And We Haven’t Noticed." It begins – "Artificial general intelligence is not something we are waiting for; rather, it is something we are already experiencing. The shift is not theatrical. There will be no public unveiling or dramatic singularity. The reality is quieter, more gradual and far more impactful. AGI is arriving like a tide, not a lightning strike."
The above article uses the term "Artificial general intelligence" or AGI, meaning AI that is human-like or better in all fields of human knowledge. Like a slowly rising tide, AI is already being built into almost every aspect of our modern society. More and more companies and public services use AI for various tasks, both menial and complex. I've used AI to solve website programming problems that I was baffled with, to write a short story for children, and make illustrations. Yes, AI can make pictures and videos that are virtually indistinguishable from those of real people... and evil people are already doing this with the intent to deceive others. So be very careful about what you read and see online and on television: it may not be real at all! I've watched various videos on YouTube that purport to be reporting on the war in Ukraine: it's hard to separate fact from fiction.
One last article, "The Truth About How Close Are We to AGI [2026?]" by the pseudonym "Sir Turing." The real Alan Turing died in 1954, but "was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer" per Wikipedia. The so-called "Turing Test" is a computing system exhibiting such human-like intelligence that a skilled person can't distinguish it from a real human. So this article, obviously written by AI, lists bullet points, bold headings, and several paragraphs of explanation about how close we are to AGI. Or maybe we're already there...! The article paints a rosy picture, but consider the source: it's written to convince you that it's benign.
You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-08-16.htm, and share it! Also, create your own website for less than $2 per month!
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