AI: Apotheosis of Machine, Annihilation of Man

Although he may be a controversial figure to quote, Dr. Jordan Peterson once said something about Artificial Intelligence (AI) which I found extremely insightful. He claimed that Artificial Intelligence was precisely what we would expect from the apogee of a postmodernity: pure thought, divorced from the body.

There are so many threads to connect surrounding AI, and so few people writing about them. I have been trying to connect with academics and clergy both young and old, and I have been having a lot of trouble finding people willing to discuss this emergent phenomenon which is, in my opinion, a true apocalypse. That is, it is the revelation of something which is hidden, and about to be revealed. The Information Age, which began with the invention of the Internet and the Semiconductor, is now reaching its apex. The same was true when we were reaching other transitional cultural and technological periods. The relationship of technology and culture is extremely complicated, and is the subject of a Magnum Opus, let alone an essay. But I want to draw attention to one particular facet of this moment in our history which is becomng more and more clear: apotheosis. The time when a person or persons ascend, or presume to ascend, into a god-like state.

Last month some people may have been following the drama with OpenAI and Sam Altman, with his ouster and acceptance back into the company. What many people may not know is that the corporate culture has been gripped by a quasi-religious fervor, with the employees chanting mantras, attending metaphysical seminars, and other common practices that far surpass mere technological enthusiasm. This even surpasses the talk futurists like to have about the so-called ‘singularity’, when mankind will merge with the machine in a sort of techno-utopia. We have seen this before, and I daresay, we will see it again. Such enthusiasms (in the literal sense of the word) were extremely common in the late 19th century, with the prevalence of Theosophy and other forms of neo-Gnosticism. Occultism in all its forms flourished among the urban elite. Even the clerical novelist Robert Hugh Benson made reference to it in his work The Necromancers. We often forget how many of the early scientists of the early modern era often titled themselves Natural Philosophers, and practiced simultaneously empirical sciences side by side with what we today would call esoterism.

The birth of the penultimate technological age, the Atomic Age, was likewise surrounded by men and women steeped in esoterism and occultism. Because of the popularity of last summer’s film Oppenheimer, it was good to see some of these references come out again. It is well documented, for instance, that Jack Parsons, founder of the Jet Propulsion Labratory in Pasadena, California, was a financial supporter and associate of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. Crowley was quite a socialite and well connected, even drawing men like Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, into his orbit. And that is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. These are not conspiracy theories. These are facts that we have, written by the men who themselves lived them, and by witnesses who saw them. My point in mentioining this is not to bring out the ‘spook’ factor, but to highlight something which has been known to many cultures since even before recorded history: genius in all its forms often seems to draw from something more than natural intelligence. But there is a right and a wrong way of doing this. One can do this through humility, love, prayer and openness to the will of the Transcendent Love we call God, or one can ally onesself with other forces, which are very diverse and very powerful, and can promise great wealth, power and knowledge, but whose end is destruction.

Many talented historians and philosophers of history such as Will Durant and Charles Taylor have remarked on the principle of duality in historical eras. Whether you want to call it the Dionysian/Apollonarian, the Rational/Emotional, the Barbarian/Monk, etc., today, the duality appears to be the Hysterical/Autistic. I do not use the latter term to disparage anyone with autism or who is on the spectrum. I only use it to specify a particular cluster of traits which is defined by hyperfocus on what we could call process or mechanical product, to the detriment of contextual reasoning. This is one reason why usually a person with autism can be so brilliant in a particular area, but struggles with seeing “big picture” connections, or struggles with making sure the chores get done at home. Some have called this duality the ‘Hysterical Feminine’ vs the ‘Autistic Masculine’, since these treats are more typical of, but not exclusive to, one sex or another. Notice, for instance, how leftists are so easy to whip into hysterical frenzy at perceived slights to their cherished worldview or victim status. Notice, for instance, that there are equally fervent leftists who, like unthinking drones, plod along in corporate boardrooms or in science labs, unhinged from the ethics of the real world. Do we need to reduce CO2 emissions? Yes. But doesn’t that mean mass exploitation and mining of now six to eight new rare earth minerals in poor areas of the world in order to decarbonize my First World economy? And what about the fact that India and China together now account for over half of all greenhouse gas emissions? Nevermind that.

What both the hysterical/autistic duality have in common is that they are both the fruit of a split. We could argue about the psychological origins of this split. I think some of it has to do with parental abandonment and family breakdown, which is one of the proposed origins of Borderline Personality Disorder, a key symptom of which is ‘splitting’, a dividing of the world and persons along rigid parameters. But there is also a metaphysical shift.

When Christianity came into dominance, the daemona went into retreat. St. Anthony of Egypt, it is said, in his travels in the desert, once encountered a lonely satyr who lamented that the Christians and their prayers had made him unable to enter the area around Alexandria any longer. The Oracle of Delphi fell silent. The old gods were put to flight. However, there has always been an ‘Invisible College’ which has tried to attain secret knowledge, putatively for the benefit of humanity. Like the temptation in the garden, if we but eat the fruit, we will become like gods. There are two ways that humanity is meant to become like God: a true way, and a false way. One into the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We call that process theosis, or literally, “god making”. The other is when we try, like the Tower of Babel or Simon Magus, to go up on our own, or by the assistance of malign powers. The result is usually quite unpleasant.

What we have at present is a group of elites, usually men and women younger than 40, most of whom are areligious and amoral, who are buying into this new cult of AI, especially AGI (Artifical General Intelligence) because they believe it will literally usher in the new era of the human race. Or, on the other hand, there are those who are complete nihilists, who believe that the human race is obsolete, and now, by giving existence to an entity which is superior to us in every respect, we are now in a sense acheiving our evolutionary purpose. Like certain flowers or insects, now that we have produced our offspring, we can die, or be annihilated. These men and women have the worst of the hysterical and the autistic elements of postmodernity, with its hypercognition (I decline to say ‘hyperrationality’) and hyperemotivity. What they have in common is a Gnostic belief that the physical universe, and human nature along with it, is flawed, is somehow evil, and must be superceded. Knowledge/Gnosis was always the way forward to conquer the ‘unjust’ imposition of this universe, but for perhaps the first time, we can create something that will completely transcend even the rules of thought and rationality itself. If we can merge with it, all the better; but if not, let it be our master, since (they say) there is no god. Alternatively, let it destroy us, for we are a plague upon the virgin earth.

AI will always cogitate better than humans can, but will never think better than humans can. This is because electric circuitry can process information far more efficently than our organic ‘circuitry’ can, by many orders of magnitude. Yet what people seem to forget is that the only reason AI can ‘create’ anything is that it is literally strapped in, “Clockwork Orange” style, eyes pried open, to the whole internet of things. Anything that is on the internet, the AI can read. Recently, it was revealed that Google’s new AI will be able to read all your e-mail that was ever on their servers, no matter how long ago. There used to be the old joke about how if you had enough monkeys typing on typewriters enough time, they would come up with the code on a strand of DNA. Now, think how much easier the task becomes if all a machine has to do is collate the thoughts of billions of actually sentient minds over perhaps trillions of works. An AI will be able to detect patterns which previously eluded us, and could help us make truly revolutionary advances in multiple fields. But only because we are sentient. As Aristotle once remarked, the artifact bears the imprint always of its maker. Or as Dante poetically put it, all of our works are the grandchildren of God.

All this reminds me of the plot of the sequel to the great 1968 film Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, released in 1970. In the film, set in the same universe as the original with Charlton Heston, the protagonist, an astronaut named Brent, finds himself marooned on a planet which he assumes is not earth, even though the atmosphere is similar. There he encounters the same sentient apes from the original film, who tell him about meeting Taylor, the hero played by Heston. Fleeing from the ape civilization, he encounters an underground civilization of grossly deformed telepaths, who end up being humans, who survived a nuclear holocaust of their own making by sheltering underground, underneath the ruined St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in New York City. Brent is followed to their colony by the apes, and the last remaining humans are unable to defend themselves against the physically and numerically superior apes. It is revealed at the end of the movie that these last humans literally adore as a god their last warhead, which literally bears the markings of Alpha/Omega, a clearly religious and apocalyptic reference. Their last act, which they view as both defiance and strangely, as worship, is to annihilate themselves, and the whole world with them. Like many movies of this era at the height of the Cold War, all too relevant today, they remind us of how the worship of the works of our hands can inevitably end in our destruction by them. Saturn will always devour his sons.

More people should be paying attention to AI, and it isn’t necessarily because we should be thinking about something like ‘Skynet’ from Terminator or some other creation from our worst nightmares (although these, too, should be looked at). At the very least, the Church, and engaged religious people, should be paying attention to it, because it is the latest idol, and it is going to be something to which many of us may be forced to bow, if we do not resist now. They are talking about it now at the World Economic Forum and at Davos, about how Human Rights and Dignity are make-believe concepts that we should ignore. The average person is not equipped with the knowledge necessary to articulate why AI is not the ‘end-all be-all’ when it comes to decision making in our society. It cannot arbitrate on life’s most fundamental questions, it cannot contextualize human experience, and although it is capable of accumualting vast amounts of knowledge, it is utterly incapable of posssessing even a single mote of wisdom. Knowledge may make men like gods, but it is by Wisdom alone that they become them, according to the divine plan.

In the Book of Revelation, Chapter 15, the Beast of the Earth, the Prophet of the Antichrist, the Beast of the Sea, is said to be capable of essentially ‘animating’ the image of the Beast of the Sea, and on account of this, he forces the stupified people of earth to take the mark of the Beast, and to worship him. One of the key features of the coming of the Antichrist and his times will be the power of deceitful artifice. When I see things like AI deepfakes, and their capacity to stir whole populations into a frenzy, and also how susceptible people today are to manipulation, I think it’s important now more than ever for everyone to cultivate human connections, and to go socially ‘low-tech’ wherever possible. As much as I have some degree of delight in seeing the main stream media slowly collapse, I also do worry, because say what you will, but these corporations do have the resources to put people on the ground in places and situations to witness very important events. It’s the same mistake that has been made in the intelligence community: an overreliance on satellites, computers and other surveillance techniques without the human component has led to startling mistakes and shortcomings in the past, with devastating consequences.

If all this is overwhelming or too much, at the very least, you can start by learning the names of the people you go to Church with, and who your neighbors are. Try not to let your relationships lapse, especially those that have been around for a while. I have a feeling that a time is going to return very quickly when the most precious thing people have between each other is trust, and that is first found with the people whom you see and meet everyday. Secondly, I think it’s important to learn a secondary trade. I may be a Priest, sure. I preach, visit the sick, hear Confessions, and the like. I study a lot, read a lot. I also write a lot and pray. I try to take time to exercise, so that I have the energy and the strength I need. I’m multilingual, but even in the age of AI, that’s not necessarily an indispensible skill. Some people pick up learning how to shoot, or how to do basic plumbing and electrical work. There are a lot of people that the new AI hegemons are going to want to put out of work and make dependent upon the government. If you can, make yourself indispensible. Because if history is any indication, all idols have feet of clay, and one day, this one too will meet its end.