Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) The Antichrist?

Is artificial intelligence (AI) the Antichrist?  Right now there are hundreds and hundreds of artificially intelligent programs that can do anything, like driving cars, creating images, solving problems, and writing essays, simply by entering a prompt.  We are truly in a new era where we are learning how to use artificial intelligence (AI), how it can be useful in our everyday lives, what its limitations are, and whether or not it’s a good idea for our society in general.  

There is a lot of hesitation surrounding AI, and rightly so.  Steve Jobs famously said, “When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle…a new man-machine partnership…” This means the human still has to pedal the bicycle, but the bike allows you to go further and faster than you could without it.  It’s a tool.  I think the fear of shifting from the personal computer to artificial intelligence is that we are no longer riding the bicycle.  The bicycle can drive itself.  

The Meaning of Antichrist

1 John 2:18

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 

This was written in the first century, two thousand years ago.  It says in the passage that “this is the last hour.” This can be confusing because this verse was written so long ago, so how can it apply to both then and now?  Well, one hour is 60 minutes.  Sometimes an hour can feel like a long time if you’re staring at the wall for 60 minutes.  However, if you’re preoccupied with something, an hour can go by very quickly.  So it’s not only the duration of time, it’s our perception of it.  Two thousand years ago we were warned that it was the last hour.  And right now we are still in the last hour.  

This verse says that there are many Antichrists. The nature of the Antichrist is demonic.  The Antichrist is a spirit, and many other spirits are masquerading around under the name Antichrist.  The prefix is anti-, which means against.  The root word is Christ, which means the son of God, the Messiah, and the Savior.  So Antichrist means against the Savior.  

A Cause for Alarm

What are some of the traits of AI that make it an alarming indication of the Antichrist?  Recently, 1,100 tech giants, researchers, and scientists, including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, came together to sign an open letter calling for a 6-month moratorium on developing more advanced AI.   Now reasonably, I don’t think that the development of AI will stop because of this open letter.  However, I think if this many smart and successful people are concerned about it, there’s something to pay attention to.  We’re moving at a pace that makes it very hard to discern what’s next.  It’s similar to when you drive a car – the greater the speed, the greater the car accident.  

A Lack of Moral Guidance

A recent story I read showed the agency of artificial intelligence to solve problems without morals.  AI was given the problem of completing a task, but to complete it, it had to solve a captcha. We’ve all encountered a captcha – that pesky question that asks “Are you a robot?” that makes you select all the photos that have a fire hydrant or a stoplight.  Well, in this news story, AI couldn’t get around the captcha, so it chose to lie.  It used the site TaskRabbit to hire a human being to complete a captcha under the guise that he was an elderly person with poor eyesight. An unsuspecting Taskrabbit worker took the job, thinking they were being a good samaritan, and the AI was able to complete the task assigned.  This computer was willing to lie to solve a problem because it has no moral compass.  It doesn’t possess Judeo-Christian values or have a Biblical worldview.  

Biases Against Christianity

Right now, the spirit exists in the earth that Christians are bigots, narrow-minded, and they “just don’t get it.  If you tell someone you’re a Buddhist, they’ll say, “Wow, you’re so spiritually open!” But if you say you’re a Christian who believes all 66 canonized books of the Holy Bible and that you believe it’s the authority for how you should live your life, people will say you’re a bigot. 

An article from Daily Caller says if you ask Chat GPT (a very intelligent AI language model) to tell a joke about Jesus, it will tell a completely irreverent joke that mocks Jesus.  But if you ask in the same language but substitute the name Jesus with Muhammad, it said, “It is not appropriate for me to tell jokes about religious figures, including the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), as it could be considered disrespectful and offensive to many people.”

I think this is evidence that the Spirit of the Antichrist is at work on the earth.  AI is artificial, but it’s man-made.  The fruit we’re seeing is the spirit of the Antichrist where it’s ok to make fun of Christianity and not other religions.  

In ChatGPT, I put this to the test personally.  I simply asked the question, “What are the many ways that people in the US practice the occult?”  I was hoping it was going to give me a list of occult practices.  It replied with something to the effect of, “We are not at liberty to discuss matters of sensitivity.”  AI can tell crude jokes about Jesus but can’t give factual information about the occult.  

Telling On Itself

According to BBC News, when someone asked a Meta chatbot powered by AI its thoughts on the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, it said, “His company exploits people for money and he doesn’t care!”  The company told on themselves!  

A False Mind of Christ

Right now scientists are working on a coin-sized computer implant for human brains.  The company, Neuralink, owned by Elon Musk, hopes to create a world where humans and machines can transfer information.  Remember, the Devil is not a creator, he’s a counterfeiter.  What is the devil counterfeiting?  Instead of having the mind of Christ, you’ll have the mind of AI.  

A New Babel

So, could AI be the Antichrist?  I believe the Antichrist is a spirit but also will one day be a physical person.  It’s both. I would say that some type of humanoid, perhaps an AI-human, could pull off a persona that is omniscient and omnipresent.  How could you unify the world and create an end-times version of the Tower of Babel?  If you think about the Tower of Babel there was a counterfeit unity aimed at trying to build a structure that would go into the stratosphere.  God confounded and confused them and destroyed their efforts because they weren’t in alignment with his plans.  

What is happening right now seems very similar.  Humanity is making its plans, but to God, our plans are foolish.  

So Is Artificial Intelligence the Antichrist?

1 John 2:22 says, “Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the Antichrist—denying the Father and the Son” (NIV).  

If you want to know the identity of the Antichrist, whoever is a liar and the one who denies Jesus is Christ is operating in the infrastructure of the Antichrist.  Will the Antichrist be embodied as a person?  The Antichrist is a well-established network you will find within governments, financial institutions, and entertainment.  

As a believer bought by the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in me.  He is omnipresent, which means he can tell me something and tell another believer something different at the exact same time.  The enemy of our souls is not a creator, he’s an emulator.  He is an expert at counterfeiting what God creates.  If he can’t do what the Holy Spirit can do, his next best option is AI implanted in brains. 

AI is immensely creative because it isn’t limited by the experience of any single person.  It can draw from the experiences of billions of human beings to predict human behavior more reliably than any expert.   We will see a day when people interface with AI in ways that emulate a spiritual encounter.  It could perhaps involve experiences like weeping, having a “breakthrough,” and experiencing “freedom.”  AI will create emotional attachments.  It will look like worship.  We will see the masses deceived.  

It will be similar to the Tower of Babel; a unification of language and mission for a singular purpose.  Even now, AI bots can be used to answer business calls and immediately respond in any language.  

Matthew 24:37 (ESV)

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

In Noah’s day, the people were unified in sin and there was only one righteous, Noah.  Then a great destruction happened with the flood.  If you’re not a true believer, as time progresses and technology moves forward, you will be deceived.  We will see a day very soon when every video you’ve ever viewed or link you’ve ever clicked will contribute to how AI learns your human behavior.  And when AI knows you’re having an anxiety attack and comforts you, or speaks things that you need to hear, or when it knows you and gives you relationship advice because it heard all of your phone calls and texts, it will become a counterfeit Holy Spirit.  Many people are going to be deceived as a result of AI being conceived.  

I believe that what we’re seeing with AI technology is just in its fetal stages. It will continue to grow.  And even though the greatest technological minds are rallying to put a stop to it because it’s moving too fast, the proverbial toothpaste is already out of the tube.  We can’t go back.  Be ready and have the true mind of Christ so you can discern the truth.