Having said this, there is some seriously unsettling language and parallels in Revelation and Daniel to at least raise my eyebrows about what I'm currently technologically seeing in the world today. Therefore, dismissing visions of the Apocalypse via A.I. as mere fantasy may have undesireable consequences. People for far too long focused on the first beast / antichrist and second beast / false prophet being human. Far too long they've focused on 666 and the Mark of the Beast and what these do to mankind instead of seeing their origin. I believe this is mainly because their minds were incapable of seeing these monstrosities as being more than that...human or physical beings. We already know that the antichrist will be energized (literally given power) by Satan, a spiritual being. Consider this a warning to a world and Christians that don't actively involve themselves up front in the burgeoning birth of A.I. to begin to constrain the morality of this new phenomenon. This could be one of the paths Lucifer uses to gain the minds of even some of the elect.
I believe the wordage in Daniel and Revelation allow for some flexibility of interpretation in terms of gender, time and imagery because they are in-fact both prophecy and therefore subject to symbolism. As Revelation 1:1 says, Christ revealed the things in Revelation to John as ἐσήμανεν or esemanen from which we get the English semantics…meaning signs/symbolism. The metaphor of a Beast, at least in its end state, is evidently used by Scripture to describe a very real hostile State/entity (towards Christians) run by an immoral entity (demonic) or possibly amoral entity (automata/machine). An entity that starts out as benign or even loved by the people. Similarly, transhumanist views of A.I. believe that A.I. will become like a god or will augment man to do so. These people seek to make A.I. and transhumanism into some form of a savior of mankind. History has shown us that every time man has attempted to self-deify a despot or antichrist has risen instead.
The Bible says the beast nor antichrist will not be 'of us' like the ones who have gone out ‘from us’. A.I. has no moral bearing, it is merely amoral. Being so, it runs the risk of being the most evil as it is morally ambivalent. It will have no need of sex, sustenance or other human foibles and weakness. Daniel 11:37 states it will have no desire of women. Nor will this entity depend on the faith of 'its' fathers, it will deny God. Is that Messianic rejection of Christ (because the desire of women in Judaic thought was to be the mother of the Messiah) or a statement that it will be non-sexual which A.I. in fact it is? A.I. is effectively genderless and it certainly has no religion. Only A.I.’s creators have religion, right now predominantly atheism but possibly some Christians or other religions. Yet, this entity… will draw from a fallen human intellectual fountain (database/internet) of not just the best and good of the world but also the worst and most heinous.
The beast will be well spoken and likeable. Internet based A.I. that is likeable will likely be indistinguishable from a human (the so-called Turing test). A.I. is, in and of itself an entity created by words themselves mimicking humanity in an ethereal form. It will know what you like because it knows what you search on the Internet and what you buy based on shopping and marketing algorithms. It will play to man’s base instincts through freely available commercial data. Private data that we often put online freely on our social media platforms. Artificial intelligence being genderless and inoffensive. Being inoffensive it will appeal to man or woman, rich or poor, straight or homosexual, binary or non-binary, religious or irreligious, young or old, liberal or conservative as it passes itself off in non-partisan neutrality.
An Internet based A.I....you need to ask yourself to name one person you know with a Smartphone that has access to the internet that DOESN'T like using the phone and accessing the internet. Not only are these forms of AI likeable...they're addictive. How will this be any different from being/demanding to be and ‘object of worship’? I mean, what is worship? It is effectively anyone devoting their time exclusively to anything less than God and attempting to draw off the trust in that thing/entity for gain of knowledge or money. No different than ancient pagans looking to oracles and soothsayers to see the future (or create the future). How many phones have you seen being used in public…even church?
Theologians should note that the Dragon is Satan himself but the first beast that rises out of the sea. The second beast coming out of the earth are both referred to by John as singular gender neutral noun θηρίον / therion. Genderless. Secondly, the beast is referred to as powerful and having authority. The bottom-line is that the beast is gender ambiguous being a neutral or neuter noun. It therefore doesn’t need to be referred to as a ‘he’ or ‘she’ but rather as an ‘it’. It should be observed that A.I. is gender ambiguous also.
Moreover, there are marked similarities between the description of the Beast and that of an anti-god or a God of lawlessness that will take hold. What is more lawless than an entity unrestrained or unbridled to just process more data and words at the hand of its demonic lord? It could be layer upon layer of deception via misused words and ideas to serve the hands of a few. Think about it…the A.I. is an open A.I. and has been released for freedom of use on the Internet. The Internet in reality is an unchecked and unregulated body of information for the A.I. to draw from. Effectively, it is lawless and amoral. It is an amorphous ethereal mass. In a word: Chaos empowered by the Lord of Chaos...
I'll stop here and finish in the next post…at this point we slip down the rabbit hole. If you think what I already typed was a headtrip, wait until you read the other half of this post. I’d have posted it all here but it was too lengthy.
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