Life on earth has always been, on the most fundamental level, a battle for the mind.
from “The Snapping of the American Mind” by David Kupelian
In this blog post I’m going to take you on a short trip with me as I let my imagination wander.
In the Old Testament, God pronounced himself to be the only God. He said, “You shall have no other gods beside me.” (Ex. 20:3) EHV. Moses brought the ten commandments down from the holy mountain, surely still overwhelmed with the time he had spent with GOD, to see a golden calf being worshipped, that his own brother had a hand in forming.
This wasn’t the first time God’s people turned their backs on him. Remember Adam and Eve? That was the first battle for the mind.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. “He [Satan] said
to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:1-3 (Emphasis mine.)
How the “mind game” works
First Satan put doubt in Eve’s mind: “Did God really say?”. Then he misled her by saying they were not to eat of any trees in the garden. He knew better, but he was confusing her mind. Then he calls God a liar: “You will not certainly die” and adds a benefit “your eyes will be opened” and tops it off with the benefit that she would have the awesome knowledge she recognized God had.
No, it wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last time people would be led astray by devious mind games. How often did God have to require his chosen people to clean out all the foreign idols from their homes? And Daniel told Belshazzar in chapter 5:23 “Then you praised the gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, who do not see and do not hear and do not know. But you did not honor the God who holds your breath in his hand and who controls all your ways.” Why, we wonder, why would they do such a stupid thing?
And, of course, it continued. Jesus warns us in Matthew chapter 24 “Many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.” (v11) and “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive even the elect, if it were possible.” (V24).
Where am I going with this stroll through the Bible? I am wondering if artificial intelligence will become our idol. Will we begin to rely more on its assistance in our daily lives, and turn to AI for “truth” only to open ourselves to being deceived? In my next post I will tell you about how ChatGPT wouldn’t give what someone asked for and, instead, lectured her on how wrong she was.
Compare AI with the wiles of Satan in the Garden of Eden
I recently read an article by Larry Bell titled, “Musk Warns AI Can Play God and Destroy Us.”
Here are the first three paragraphs of that piece:
During an April 17 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, mega-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk issued a stark warning that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to rapidly evolve into a faux “digital
god” which can influence humans to engage in self-destructive decisions and actions. (Emphasis mine.)
For this reason, Musk, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, and many other tech experts who share this concern, are calling for a pause in advances toward superhuman capabilities for six months or more until society can better understand and head off the risks.
Elon is very serious about this danger … enough so that in 2018 he walked away from continuing an early major investment in super intelligent capabilities as a co-founder of OpenAI largely controlled by Microsoft because it disregarded his concerns.
I don’t know anything about his religious beliefs, but Elon Musk is no fool. In an open letter dated March 22, signed by about 50,000 including Musk and Steve Wozniak, it states:
AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research[1] and acknowledged by top AI labs.[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control. (Emphasis mine.)
AI may write, or rewrite, the holy Word of God?
A professor, Yuval Noah Harari, was criticized for a comment he made in a speech. Here is that questionable quote:
Throughout history, religions dreamt about having a book written by a superhuman intelligence, by a non-human entity,” he [Prof. Yuval Noah Harari] said in the interview. “Every religion claims our book – ‘Oh, the books of the other religions, they – humans wrote them, but our book? No, no, no, no, it came from some superhuman intelligence. In a few years, there might be religions that are actually correct. That – just think about a religion whose holy book is written by an AI.
Harari explained his statement saying that he was not saying the new religious texts would be “actually correct,” but with AI, it was correct to say there may actually be religious texts written by AI. His revised interpretation of what he meant to say is all right as far as it goes. What he did not revise is that he implies that no religion is based on the written word of God. The Bible is not the word of some “artificial intelligence.” It is the word of our truly omniscient God.
AI is not omniscient! Nor is it always truthful. Remind your kids of that important fact as they read and are taught opinions that raise question marks over their heads. Whatever the issue, check what God says about it in His word. Just a few of the questions they’ll find answered in the Bible are:
What can come before God in our lives?
Does God approve of homosexuality and other sexual aberrations?
Should we pray for our leaders and respect them even if they are not good leaders?
How did the universe, the world and everything in it come to be?
Do not let AI become their idol. I do believe that AI is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle. Therefore you must prepare your kids to live in an information world that is a minefield. They must be careful where they step.
You may want to review my post of June 16 titled “IS SOMEONE YOU KNOW ‘CONFIDENTLY IGNORANT’?”