Joe Allen

This struggle has taken on apocalyptic overtones in the rhetoric to the point that everyone seems to be calling their opponents the most evil being in existence, in this case, the Antichrist.

We hear Peter Thiel accusing anyone of trying to over-regulate technology, specifically artificial intelligence, as at least a herald of the Antichrist, the herald of a global government, a global government that, in his view, would use the fear of AI, of nuclear weapons, of bioweapons, as a justification for a one-world global disaster.

dictatorship on the other hand you have elon musk who is at present the wealthiest man on the planet talking about artificial super intelligence not just augmenting human behavior but replacing human capabilities altogether

In fact, we just heard him say that in the long term, we can expect the future of humanity not to be under human control, and certainly not to be under God's control, but to be under the control of digital systems, of virtual minds, of artificial superintelligence.

And he says this with a kind of Romanesque arrogance.

One might even accuse him

of being, if not the Antichrist, the herald of the Antichrist.

And then you have those who see artificial intelligence itself as the Antichrist figure, the ultimate global ruler, so that we end up, as described in Revelation chapter 13,

In a situation where the image of the beast is caused to speak and all people are caused to get a mark either on their forehead or on their hand, bringing to mind really the idea of chipping people's brains.

of chipping people's palms, and lorded over by a digital system that would control all human consciousness, all human behavior, and ultimately be looked at as a god on earth.

Now, these are imaginations of the future, and these are religious imaginations of the future.

This is nothing new.

But what is new is the human capability to use technology to make life a living hell for other human beings.

As I sit here in the imperial capital of Washington, DC, I have to wonder, watching this struggle for power, and we all know that if technology is anything, it's the source of power.

And as I watch this struggle for more and more wealth, if we know anything about technology, it is the source of gargantuan amounts of wealth.

I have to wonder if perhaps this Antichrist that everyone is looking out there to identify, this Antichrist that people accuse their enemies of being, perhaps that Antichrist is something buried within the dark recesses of our own hearts.

Perhaps that Antichrist is us.

And perhaps the worst manifestation of this Antichrist would be human beings in control of hellish technologies.

With that in mind, that bright glowing vision of humanity in the future in mind, I'd like to bring you into one such imagination produced by an anonymous AI user who used generative AI to depict

the world under the control of generative AI.