"AI ethics" scaremongering is part of the totalitarian PSYOP

The global Establishment "AI" project began almost exactly three years ago - with the multi-national, multi-pronged, coordinated mega-launch on 30th November 2022.

The "AI" project has, of course - like all such*, tried to capture both of the side of the "debate" - by using some portion of its multi-trillion dollar budget to fund courses, qualifications, conferences, books, and jobs; that purport to discuss the "ethics" of this technology. 

Some of these "AI"-employees are techno-utopian apologists for "AI"; while others have the task of scaremongering.

"AI" scaremongering is done in such a way that the realities of this vast totalitarian project are obscured; and the categorically false assertions of "AI" are instead simply being-assumed to be true - by being used as the basis for the scaremongering!

In other words; the discourse variously called "AI ethics" (like the related field of "AI governance") is part of the PSYOPS that attempts (and successfully, it seems) to manipulate the masses into a state of bemused, terrified, passive and resigned acceptance of... whatever bad things "AI" brings. 

Some of the "ethicists" base their "concern" on evaluations of what is coming - very soon! 

These include assumptions that are smuggled in covertly, because they form the taken-for-granted basis of the ethical hand-wringing: 

1. Inevitability

2. Takeover from humans

3. Destruction caused by the technology

The assumption of "inevitability" hides the unimaginable trillions of tax dollars confiscated from the masses to fund the "AI" project - its massive computational infrastructure, the massive energy consumption, the countless reallocated and recruited "AI"-personnel in innumerable organizations...

And to bribe/force compliance upon all the major social institutions and corporations by a vast and coordinated program.

The assumption that "AI" will "takeover" from humans; hides that all actual decisions to (allegedly) "replace" people with computers, are made by humans.

Yet the background-assumption is that this planned takeover of human activities by "AI" technologies will - somehow - happen because of the technologies innate alleged-"power". 

The simple fact is that people make the decision; and when these humans decisions lead to "AI" takeover, this is because that human choice has been heavily propagandized, incentivized (by subsidies, tax-breaks etc), driven by legislation changes - and so forth. 

If "AI" is in any sense "inevitable" - then that inevitability is merely because enough people will respond to the enormous pressures and incentives that have been created via the colossal funding of the project and the compliance of the leadership class.  

Destruction: Software is stated to be the cause of the inevitable (i.e. planned) personal and social damage confidently-predicted to result from the "takeover" of "AI".

This tries to hide that the whole process of "AI"-replacing has been driven and enforced, top to bottom, by people.

And this includes the common appeal to "market forces" and geopolitical competition, that supposedly compel corporations and governments to implement "AI" technology - or else be overwhelmed by those who adopt "AI"...

This assumes what is false: that "AI" really does or soon-will replace humans more efficiently and effectively in significant functional roles. 

It also takes no account that the "market" for "AI" has been deliberately and artificially constructed by totalitarian fiat using coercively-confiscated resources. 

If the marketplace had instead been orientated towards effectiveness and efficiency in achieving real-world outcomes; then it would not, indeed could not, have led to "AI". 

So; the "AI" project serves to conceal and deny a vast program of (yes - inevitable! if the totalitarian Establishment get Their way) planned personal and societal harm; under cover that all this has been done "by the AI" - and in a way that is unstoppable and impersonal.

In a way that is nobody's fault. 

No person or group is to blame for anything!

It All Just Happened..

(And "how sad", say the AIethicists...)

The lie is that this is not really people who are doing the destroying by means of a colossal organized and resourced international strategy; but instead it is the software that is doing this to us humans!

(When we suffer or die; we are meant to cry out from our hearts: "Woe is me, my heart bleeds! But what can mere Men do against such impersonal necessity?")

Behind the advertised ethical "concern" lies a raft of made-up, dishonest and propagandistic assertions about the functional efficiency and effectiveness of (post-November 2022) "AI". 

The truth of these assertions is another thing which is assumed, in the face of a complete lack of serious and honest evidence; and fundamentally rooted in the categorical impossibility of the claims.

  

My point here is clarify that those who are put-forward in mainstream discourse as "ethically concerned" by the "implications" of "AI" - including those who scaremonger on the basis of false assumptions concerning the technology's effectiveness and impersonal-inevitability - are themselves part of the coordinated AI-PSYOPS. 

+++

*It seems that "AI" project (in all its facets) has been the primary - single largest and most sustained - strategy of the globalist leadership class over the past three years. 

"AI" is the current main mechanism of progressing Ahrimanic evil; those in the leadership class who desire a wholly materialist society of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

Meanwhile, since early 2022, the "Agents of Chaos" (who pursue the spiteful and destructive agenda of Sorathic Evil); have been focussing their efforts on escalating everywhere-wars abroad plus intra-national violence at home. 

Although these two types of evil are increasingly in conflict among the leadership class of the world; they seem to have reached an uneasy truce on the subject of "AI"; based on opposite understandings of what "AI" will actually do. 

The totalitarians (falsely) believe that AI can be the basis of a world-administering bureaucracy that is both cheaper and more controllable than the current armies of managers and clerks.

On the other side, the Agents of Chaos (correctly) realize that "AI" cannot - therefore will not - perform this functional job; but will instead destroy social functioning, generate mass misery and death, and collapse civilization into that disorder they crave.

So, at present; both sides of the Global Establishment have reasons to continue to facilitate, fund, and propagandize the ongoing "AI" takeover - which is why you never hear an Establishment voice that is critical of "AI" for the right reasons and from the right assumptions. 

Why "AI" is qualitatively worse than the internet/ social media/ smartphones

People apparently have difficulty understanding (or explaining to themselves) just why post-November 2022 "AI" is qualitatively worse than the previously-existing computer-media phenomena - such as the internet, social media and smartphones. 

The answer is quite simple: upfront and no secret. 

As usual; probably because evil must be invited into the heart in order to damage the soul; the agents of strategic evil always tell us what they intend for us, before they try to do it. 

In this case, "They" have told us explicitly that the purpose of "AI" is to replace human thinking, judgment, creativity - and loving-relationships. 

Again: "AI" is intended to replace humans in the realms of:

1. Thinking

2. Judgment

3. Creativity

4. Loving-relationships

In other words, the explicit intent of "AI" is to replace human beings in their most distinctive and spiritually-highest aspects. 

And that is what people are agreeing-to, when they defend and promote the "AI" project. 

The fact (and I regard it as a simple and sure fact) that "AI" cannot replace human beings in these aspects is almost irrelevant to the purpose of "AI"; because the purpose does not depend upon "AI" actually being able to do these things; but only on convincing human beings that "AI" can do these thing. 

In sum; the reason for the tera-dollar investment and subsidy of "AI"; the mandatory top-down societal transformations, the colossal pro-"AI" career and status incentivization of the intellectual, technical, and managerial class...

Is simply that people will believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.  

The endemic condition of AI-dolatry can therefore be defined the belief that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships. 

Because if you believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships; then you will almost-inevitably (sooner or later) conclude that "AI" should replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.

The "should" follows the "can", because "AI" is (and has been grossly subsidized, at our expense, so as to be) quicker, easier, and more reliable than human beings. 

In other words; if we believe "AI" can do X as well as (or better) than humans, then it follows that "AI" should do X.  

To conclude: It is the belief about "AI" that does the spiritual harm to human beings. 

We have been told explicitly what "AI" is intended to do, and there is a trillions-dollars international program tasked with implementing this...

Thus, those who justify and advocate "AI" just-are agreeing-with, justifying and advocating; the actual and on-going totalitarian strategy of replacing human beings in their most distinctive and highest aspects. 

This is the side the AI-dolators have chosen, in the spiritual war of this-world. 

And who could deny that the global totalitarian "AI" project and strategy has (so far) been overwhelmingly successful in convincing great swathes of people (especially in the managerial, technical, and intellectual classes) that "AI" can (and therefore, implicitly, should) replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships? 

In three short years; AI-dolatry has become not just statistically normal; not just a functional requisite for tens of millions; not just ubiquitous and unavoidable on and around the internet and social media; not just socially-rewarded...

But AI-dolatry has become positively-valued. 

Given the provenance, intent, and effects of "AI"; we have here an explanation for the observation of a unique and qualitatively-enhanced nature of personal spiritual corruption; directly resulting from the high and increasing prevalence of AI-dolatry. 

The "AI" Litmus Test Fail: Is it caused by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Projection? Managerialism?

I am intrigued by the Litmus Test failure of so many self-identified Christians to discern the grossly net-evil intent driving the current (post November 2022) wave of so-called AI. I want to understand it. 

"It's just a tool" - they say. Yes, and so are all the instruments of mass surveillance and population control "just tools"; from secret police and death squads, to smear campaigns, covert propaganda, and infiltration/ subversion. 

Of course, there are always potentially useful aspects to any tool, bureaucracy, technology - but so what? You can use thumbscrews to hold the door open, or a cosh as a paper weight. You need to ask - what are they designed for, how will they be used.  

The real questions at issue are things like: why did the global Establishment spend trillions of dollars on developing, launching, and implementing these "AI" technologies; what results are they intending to achieve from their investment; and what functions will they actually be deployed for, in the world as it actually is? 

Clearly; it is very important to some people with a lot of power and money, that these AI technologies be adopted and used very widely - whether they work well or not, whether we want them or not. 

Then, from our spiritual and Christian point of view we need to ask - honestly, and by learning from past experience - what will be the overall effect of mass usage of AI-technologies: what will they (on average) do to the way people think, Western society and its institutions, our attitude to the world, our aspirations?

Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism? 

To ask is to answer. 

 

The only honest conclusion from such questions regarding the evil provenance of AI, the fundamentally untruthful propaganda surrounding its emergence and spread (e.g. the word-concept "intelligence!), the coercive and totalitarian implementation - is that this kind of AI is a massive strategy designed to do harm of many kinds. 

Whether you personally believe you are personally exempted from general harm, that you can surf this wave of evil to your own advantage - well this is another matter altogether. 

But even if you can, and even if you actually do make the best of a societal state of waxing corruption (gaining more money, prestige, or power for yourself, perhaps?) - this does not excuse you when you argue in favour of what should recognized as a malign plan.

Otherwise you are no better than a stereotypical war profiteer; one who uses his influence (fasle information, bribery, blackmail etc.) to cause, expand and continue destructive wars - so that you personally can do well out of it. Even if some war is good for you here-and-now, does not mean that war is good in itself - and you ought not to believe or say that it is. 

We cannot defend ourselves against evil unless we recognize evil. Apologists for "AI" are not just harming themselves but others in failing to acknowledge an obvious and major demonic scheme. 

Why, then, do they do this? I think the reasons are psychological - not spiritual. 

There is, I think, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work. 

I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics. 

I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable. 

(You cannot beat 'em, so you might as well join Them.)  

One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!

But this is patent nonsense in general and specifically. Fear of AI is far from normal - which is why so much propaganda must be expended on trying to generate fear (via innumerable mass media fictions about evil AIs, and AI dystopias).

In real life the overwhelming response to AI is on a spectrum from moderate irritation and boredom, to mainstream everyday careerist attempts at exploitation of "the latest trendy thing". 

Therefore such an accusation of fear is a dead giveaway, a projection onto others of something within oneself - often emanating from those who really feel, personally, threatened by replacement or oppression with AI technologies. 

For instance those who hope (like generations before them) to escape this fate by vaulting-over the threat into a managerial situation: to position themselves as expert and enthusiastic "AI managers" in their particular field. 

To adopt an accusatory or "therapeutic", stance to those who see the evil motivation behind AI is classic managerialism! 

The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions... 

The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over;  the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them". 

AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.

If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.     

 

The "AI" dupes: Thumbs in the scales

One of the difficult lessons, particularly emphasized by Owen Barfield, is that in every way the spiritual is prior to, and encompasses, the material. 

The spiritual world existed first - material and incarnation came later, and locally. Reality is spiritual - with some parts of it also material. The material is always spiritual, but the spiritual is not always material. 

Therefore, necessarily, the post-November 2022 "AI" phenomenon is spiritual... But that platitude does not tell you in what way any particular asserted-AI is spiritual.  

One deep problem with "AI" is that almost everything we are told about it (what it is, what it can and should do) is asserted by corrupted, lying, manipulative and evil-motivated sources (i.e. the leadership class in the major social institutions) - or by those who are on the payroll. 

This nearly-always means that our knowledge can only be negative and general - because, in a domain of untruthfulness, we cannot have valid positive and specific information.  

(One honest Man dwelling in a world of liars cannot rely on other-Men for valid knowledge.) 

We should therefore assume the problem of discovering the nature and capability of actually-in-place "AI", and even more its assumed future possibilities, this problem goes much deeper than recognized. 

It is obvious that people who interact with "AI" assume that everything it does is done by computers. 

But there is no reason to assume this is true - especially not in situations where it is advantageous to the "AI" agenda that human thumbs should be pressing down the scales in the desired direction, whenever that is useful. 

Of course, even the acknowledged mechanisms of "AI" rely on humans for all the heavy-lifting - the fundamental categorizations of phenomena that form the basis of all subsequent processing, the "AI" learning feedback etc. 

But there is every reason why human beings would actively, in real-time, be involved in so-called "AI" processing; when it is important enough to make the effort. 

After all, the funding and resourcing of "AI" is incomprehensibly vast - so paying people to add a human touch to "AI" processing is perfectly feasable! 

Human boosting of "AI" can be (and is) even explained-away - so that the actual people who are actually paid to do it, apparently do not necessarily realize (most often do not care) why they are providing human tweaks to the algorithms, nor what are the top-level planned consequences of their human-assists. 

There is a definite precedent with Search Engines; in which processes of ranking results that were advertised as objective and algorithmic, were in fact subjective and ideologically-driven. 

Big Tech is prepared to pay its myriad minions to subvert or distort its algorithms, when this is in aid of an agenda that they consider to be more important. 

And currently it is supremely important that as many people as possible be persuaded of the nigh-miraculous powers and capabilities of "AI", including ideas that "AI" has intrinsic functional capability, sentience, agency, and superior intelligence to human beings - and therefore that "AI" not only will but ought-to replace human beings. 

The PSYOP includes a strategy of convincing humans of their own inferiority to that mixed package of people and computers called "AI"; and therefore that this self-styled "AI" should replace the humans...

And in practice, therefore, to manufacture consent for the a centralized totalitarian System; in which those who own/ operate/ control the truly-colossal "AI"-enterprise are voluntarily accorded an objective right to rule the rest of Mankind... in whatever ways They "know" to be just and good.  

So we should expect human inputs and enhancements - a human thumb in the computerized scales - to be normal and routine whenever this is expedient for the success of the "AI" agenda.  

Tron: Ares at the cinema - brief notice, and consideration of its "AI" agenda

Yesterday I went to see Tron: Ares at the cinema, and found it exciting and enjoyable: a solid three star (out of five) movie of the "worth watching" category. 

I had not seen the male lead Jared Leto before, or at least I don't recall seeing him; and I found him a very good actor with definite screen presence. He seems to have considerable scope - including understated comedy. 

The rest of the acting was okay or decent; except female lead Greta Lee who was moderately sub par - neither a good actor, nor having star quality; but this didn't much matter in the action-orientated context of the movie. 

What I found interesting as I left the cinema, was to reflect - yet again - on how often a modern mega-corporation with net-evil motivations, produces movies that at least seem to be about the intrinsically evil nature of modern mega-corporations... 

This was particularly strange, given that Tron: Ares has a happy (albeit cursorily so) ending which involves the intrinsic evil being overcome, and a mega-corps made net-beneficial to humanity - simply by having a nice person in charge! 

The threadbare notion of a benign dictator "setting all to rights" in an intrinsically corrupt world; is still (for lack of alternatives, perhaps) a governing wishful delusion for many people. 

Witness that (albeit very brief!) episode earlier this year when so many people expressed intense and joyful - and insanely optimistic - fantasies of just this kind, when DT became US president. 

The other aspect I found intriguing was how Ares frames the "AI" aspect; given that this is currently (and during the production of this movie) perhaps the numero uno socio-political strategy of the totalitarians in the the Western Establishment. 

In sum: throughout Tron: Ares "AI" is assumed to be - and is presented as - functionally powerful, in a way that it just cannot be. 

The whole world of "AI" is visually-depicted as overwhelmingly vast and sophisticated, its progression and take-over happening with a stream-roller inevitability - a combination that induces in the audience a kind of awed-helplessness. 

Furthermore; it is both shown in the script and explicitly asserted that these "AI" systems are genius-like; in that they are creatively problem-solving. 

This superhuman creativity is harnessed to the usual left-progressive agenda - which is to reduce/eliminate particular forms of human suffering and environmental damage. 

Because of "AI"'s steamroller effectiveness, this fantasy of progress is given an apparent inevitability... if only we can ensure "the right people" are "in charge". 

And - most strikingly - we are (yet again) shown that "singularity-moment" whereby sufficiently-advanced "AI" will develop agency, autonomy, human characters - including motives, feelings, and morals. 

Since I understand these as attributes of Beings; and because "AI" is not a Being - also Beings are eternal entities and cannot be manufactured -- then I know that this singularity stuff is either 100% incoherent impossible nonsense - or else an evil-motivated and -manufactured dishonest manipulation.  

But the singularity assumption also has a consoling spin; because, despite the probabilities of evil-AIs to contend with; it holds-out the hope of a world where (as in Tron: Ares) the conscious-AI agents can become our mutually-loving friends. 

In sum;

By funding and enabling the production of spectacular action movies that assume and depict nonsensical and impossible attributes of "AI" - the Establishment creates a halo around the actuality of that necessarily-destructive and function-destroying "AI" which is being rolled-out and implemented all over the world - in one of the biggest technological projects of all time.

At some level of this process, there are people (or, at least, sentient beings) who know perfectly well that the Hollywood depictions of the scope, nature and possibilities of "AI" have nothing whatsoever to do with the actuality.

At another level, the (qualified) techno-optimism of Tron: Ares reveals to me that the great mass of people who are involved in the Great "AI" Project - the AI-dolators - are literally deluded...

By literally deluded; I mean that (in the active and functional aspects of their thinking) the AI-dolators have a false understanding of what they are dealing with, and what they are doing. 

They may, somewhere in their memories, have a correct understanding of the nature and limits of so-called AI -- but, if so, this truth is cut-off, encapsulated from their everyday and working-life cognitive processing. 

(Such encapsulations are characteristic, indeed necessary, for modern mainstream thinking, as was described by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances. For example, both those who assume that reality is "out there" and objective (including most traditionalist Christians); and those who assume the only reality is subjective and individual - are both engaged in encapsulated delusional thinking.) 

Any truths about "AI" reality such people may once have grasped, have since been sealed-away in a watertight mental compartment; so that functionally-speaking they can and do believe the fantasy-hype that lies behind the media representations; and in practice they conflate such untruths with the mundane reality of multi-national mega-corps top-down-mandatory "AI"*.  

That, at any rate, is how I regard Tron: Ares. 

At one level it is an enjoyable and decently-made spectacle and drama; at another it is a work of deep and re-framing propaganda; at another level I can observe the propaganda working in myself - and thereby have the chance to learn something more about the Establishment agenda. 

    

*This is used in self-deceptive as well as publicly dishonest ways: "Yes, of course, we all know that This is the case... Look we acknowledged it Here..." While, in practice, taking zero account of such knowledge and acknowledgements. Thus someone who parrots phrases about the nature and constraints of current-"AI" - completely ignores these realities whenever reasoning or making decisions, and the fantasy-hype assumptions inevitably encroach-upon on and dominate both behaviour and rhetoric. 

Why So Many Kinds of intellectuals have been captured by "AI"

The vulnerability to "AI"-capture seems to run deepest among intellectuals - but this vulnerability extends across a very wide range of intellectual types - politicians, media executives, corporate managers, finance entrepreneurs, technocrats, academics, teachers, totalitarians, atheists and traditionally religious, New Age spiritual seekers... 

Indeed, no class or kind of intellectual persons seem to have much resistance to capture.

It seems that almost all have by now succumbed; and with those who have not succumbed... well, it seems like just a matter of "not yet"*.  

Why are intellectuals especially vulnerable?

My best guess is that intellectuals have always tended to engage with life via models; and models are abstract simplifications of the boundless complexity of reality. Such models include mathematics, sciences, politics, economics; and indeed all academic and bureaucratic subjects. 

This second-hand engagement via abstract simplifications is valuable insofar as the models are useful; albeit the usefulness of a model may not have been checked, and even if a model has been checked these checks are only retrospective (can only be retrospective). 

The prospective, future limitations of a model (which limitations are many and intrinsic exactly because it is an abstract simplification) are not knowable or predictable in advance; and indeed when the model has captured a person, the failures of a model will usually be denied, explained-away.  

The value of intellectuals is not that they understand Life, or The World, or The Universe, or God; but that they understand the model. 

Insofar as the model is useful or valued, so intellectuals are useful or valued. 

But the problem, the weakness, is that intellectuals (of all kinds) so-often depend for their position and self-esteem on maintaining the special value of second-hand understandings (of all kinds). 

One malign tendency among intellectuals is to assert the primacy of the model: that the model is itself The Thing being-modelled. 

And another tendency is to increase the abstraction and complexity of the model, partly to protect their own expertise - e.g. to keep the model difficult enough to elude external analysis and critique, and to impress/ bamboozle/ subordinate the layman. 

I mean that intellectuals are prone to elaborating or generating a complex model that covers ever-more ground. 

Indeed, intellectuals tend to press their models to such a degree of complexity and abstraction, that they themselves do not understand the model in which they claim expertise. 

Instead intellectuals may claim expertise in using the model.

So the situation arises that many intellectuals suffer the profound and existential disadvantages of a belief-in, a commitment to, the primacy of merely secondhand models of reality...

Yet these are models which the intellectuals themselves do not understand; instead these are models that the intellectual merely serves (or claims to serve).

This situation, although common, is wrong - is indeed evil; insofar as service to the un-understood, service to something whose nature is not known, is evil.  

So-called-AI is a cluster of abstract, highly complex, and un-understandable models of reality. 

There can be no expertise in understanding an "AI" model.  

As such; "AI" technologies suffer all the intrinsic disadvantages of all models; but "AI" also intrinsically lack the potential value (which is a pragmatic and retrospective value) of the most valid models.   

Therefore, the special vulnerability of intellectuals to capture by "AI" is in the first-place a consequence of the evil abuses of secondhand models as a way of relating to reality; secondly that "AI" models are of a model-type that cannot validly be used, since they are un-understandable. 

The answer to this situation is in striving to eschew un-understandable models of reality - and to reject their primacy; and to recognize that to be useful a model must genuinely be understood. 

Such a moral discipline will reject a great deal more than "AI" - but exactly that is necessary+. 

Because all abstract models of reality need to be simple enough that we genuinely understand them: and if we are to regard them as central to our lives, we need personally to understand them. 

It is not difficult, as a mental process. 

I believe that we all already-have a simple, innate and direct (because God-given) contact with primary Life and Reality. 

The intellectual deception is in demanding a more comprehensive, hence too-complex, typically too abstract, understanding - than that which is understandable and knowable.

In a nutshell; modern intellectuals of all stripes and types have become experts at self-validating, self-serving, self-deception; by pretending (for advantages of self-esteem, for claimed social expediency) to understand that which they do not understand...

Which is why intellectuals are so especially vulnerable to capture by the un-understandable models of "AI". 

_____

+ I mean that if someone tries to reject "AI" while retaining their commitment to some abstract, complex, un-understood model/s - then that person will end-up by embracing "AI". 

And this is exactly what has happened to so many intellectuals over the past four years. 

As they come to realize that "AI" is not qualitatively different from that-to-which-they-have-outsourced-their-thinking-and-judging; rather than rejecting their practice of outsourcing, such persons instead expand their outsourcing such as to include "AI". 

*NOTE: My concern here is spiritual. Of course; the effect of "AI" will be to hasten the destruction of Western Civilization. But in that resepct "AI" is just one of many, simultaneous and synergistic global strategies (e.g. everywhere war, financial parasitism, purposive economic and agricultural destruction, mass migration, the CO2 Climate agenda etc etc). And, after all, the West is by-now (and increasingly) the most extremely and unrepentantly evil civilization in world history - such that striving to "save" WC in the absence of a prior spiritual rebirth, entails a personal commitment to advance purposive evil. No: The most significant harm of "AI"-capture is spiritual: 1. spiritual outsourcing; and 2. spiritual outsourcing of almost the worst conceivable kind - its being evidently both addictive in the short-term, and purposively soul-destroying in a cumulative and self-stoking fashion. To observe more and ever-more once-respected persons, across the board of thinkers and intellectuals, so-willingly succumbing to AI-dolatry of one sort of another - is a spiritually-dismaying experience. I should add that although AI-capture is common across the board, and not confined to intellectuals; I believe that its spiritual damage is most severe and pervasive - and negatively transformative - among the intellectual class.  

The soulless mediocrity of current-"AI" is a consequence of blending and averaging in its industrial -scale plagiarism

One striking aspect of the industrial-scale plagiarism that is current "AI", is that the mechanism of generation leads inevitably to soulless mediocrity in its output.

This is because it samples, selects, blends, extrapolates from multiple sources. It is based on averaging - which entails removing the extremes that characterize genuine creativity, including genius. 

Consider: how would you plagiarize poetry such as to generate a work of genius? 

The only valid method is to re-label. 

You would need already to know of, a poetic work of genius (something which depends on prior human evaluation) perhaps a particular sonnet by Shakespeare. 

...Then to re-label this sonnet with your own name as author instead of Shakespeare - and convince other people that you (not Shakespeare) had written it.  

Such is the only way to ensure the production of a work of genius, of quality equal to the original. 

If instead you were to try and create a poem by sampling and combining several or many Shakespeare sonnets, then obviously the result would not be as good.  

If you tried to create poetry by (in some way, any way) averaging multiple Elizabethan poems of multiple authors, or many poems from all eras - the result would become less and less good, the more you added. 

The more you sample, and the more you average - the worse it gets. 

What this kind of multiplying and averaging can do, is create fakes that are hard to distinguish from mediocre poems - and can pass as an instance of the type, especially among people who are lack time, or aptitude, have little interest, or are weakly motivated. 

For example, if you were to combine all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets - you could perhaps make something that was not easily distinguishable in quality from the mediocre or poor instances of his Sonnets - especially among those who were not really able to appreciate the quality of the best of the Shakespeare originals. 

And the AI approach is what successful forgers have done in the world of fine art. They do not try to forge the best Vermeer; not least because the forger could not do it. Instead, they attempt to forge a mediocre instance Vermeer, a variation on a known theme; something "good enough" that - when provided with a fake provenance by aesthetically-incompetent evaluators - can pass as a mediocre work by a great painter. 

Such mediocre forgeries can then sometimes be passed off as "great art" on the basis that they are superficially appealing to only-mildly-interested people with mainstream modern tastes - but that does not affect their artistic mediocrity - evident to those who can evaluate quality. 

But here we have another problem of AI, which is that it is mostly being casually used by lazy and conformist people who have little interest, ability or experience in the area of implementation. 

If all you are working at some chore, and all you want is background music, then genuine creativity is irrelevant - fakes and forgeries are fine. Computer-generated or AI muzak will suffice. 

If you are an average school kid, college student, post-graduate, professor; and all you want is to complete some assignment with the minimum of effort and getting the highest evaluation possible (without activating the plagiarism detectors - mechanical or human); then the truth and validity of what you write is irrelevant. Consensus-compatibility is very important, but ultimate value is not at all. Averaged mediocrity is indeed the ideal! AI will suffice. 

If you are a professional researcher in "science" or academia, who seeks career advancement and high status; then you will do or say whatever you believe will help pursue those goals. Developing, buying, using or praising AI will be embraced insofar as it seems expedient in terms of your immediate objectives. The fact that AI-output is boring, derivative and adds nothing substantive is all-but irrelevant; because that exactly characterizes the professional environment in which you already operate and in which you hope to thrive. AI will be fine for your purposes.  

 

It is evident that the set-up of current so-called AI - to sample (i.e. plagiarize) massively, combine and blend multiples, and generate an averaged-output; is necessarily soulless and mediocre. 

AI simply cannot-help but generate the soulless and mediocre - and is therefore a tool introduced and imposed by those who desire that society should be like that. 

Furthermore, this kind of "AI" can only spread and be used is a society where most people actually prefer the soulless and the mediocre; at least, when this is convenient. 

On top of this; Western Civilization is led and inhabited by shoals of Godless materialistic people who care absolutely nothing for Truth, Beauty or Virtue; are indifferent to quality and even functionality. 

These will implement AI even when it is functionally inferior or much worse, than existing systems and persons. 

It is a measure of our civilizational and personal corruption that AI is being so rapidly and pervasively imposed upon The West - and why so many, at so many levels, have embraced it. 

AI will be worse - but it will happen anyway... (Artificial Intelligence is the new bureaucracy)

As always, public discourse focuses us upon the wrong issues. With Artificial Intelligence the focus is upon whether it can be 'better' than the human mind - but the real question is much simpler: whether AI can replace the human mind.

The point is that AI systems can replace human thinking whether they are better or worse. Better or worse doesn't matter...

AI will, in fact, be worse than the human mind: much, much worse - but that doesn't stop AI from replacing the human mind.

AI is an extension of bureaucracy - which has replaced the individual human with systems of committees; has replaced judgement with votes; has destroyed responsibility.

Is a committee better than the individual - No, it is worse.

Has that fact prevented committees replacing individuals in all positions of significant authority in all societies in the developed world? No. Bureaucracy is everywhere, all the bureaucracies are linked, the individual is is a slave of The System - not the slave of a person; and this slavery applies to all individuals, even/ especially those who are members of the committees...

AI is bureaucracy cubed - it is driven by the same intent, it has the same objectives, and it has the same indifference to consequence. Just as bureaucracy is intrinsically immoral, intrinsically evil, in its destruction of responsibility - so exactly is AI - but this is no accident. On the contrary this is precisely why committees run everything; and why bureaucracy can (and will, if plans go through) be replaced by AI. 

AI is bureaucracy 2.0.  The question is, who - or what - stands behind the bureaucracy? What purpose drives this long-term agenda to replace all human thinking - that is, to replace all human thinking, by all individual humans, ultimately.

(Clue: the answer isn't human.)

All through our world, the worse-bureaucracy has replaced the better-individual; responisbility and judgment have been annihilated on multiple fronts... The process continues, globally, without evaluation or negative feedback -  and this is the exact intention for rolling-out AI.

Bureaucracy is always worse, but it has happened anyway. AI will be worse, but it will happen anyway. 

(Unless, of course, we stop it. And the place to stop it is in our own minds, our own hearts, our own deepest understanding. AI is a vampire - it can only enter where it is invited; but at present we are inviting-in the vampire - we are indeed paying the vampires to assimilate our souls.)

Actually-being-implemented "AI" is being introduced as an intended tool for mass thought control... Obviously!

Any Artificial Intelligence ("AI") which is not merely hypothetical and concerned with possibilities - and that is actually being implemented in Western Society on any significant scale - should be regarded as the intentional product of the ruling totalitarian Establishment in one of its manifestations. 

AI is - from the point-of-view of those in the Establishment who have funded, promoted, and spread it - a tool. 

AI as a phenomenon therefore needs to be recognized as a totalitarian Establishment tool for implementing Their aims; a means to some end. 

The question is: What end?

Therefore we ought to ask ourselves of AI in general, and specific instances: 

What is AI technology intended to do to the humans who use it? 

How is AI intended to affect Man's thinking, emotions, reasoning, understanding?

And (in total, over time): What is frequent, pervasive, mandatory human interaction with AI intended to do to Men's overall assumptions concerning the nature of reality.

Actually-used AI is not a matter of what we personally think it might be useful for; the reason we have it, the reason it is being puffed and pushed, the reason it is being implemented with no serious testing, no fair comparison, no objective checking of outcomes is intentional: there is will behind this vast and coordinated pro-AI activity. 

The reason for all this, is that from the perspective of Those with effective power, wealth, fame, status - AI has a job to do on "the masses" - a job to do on those human beings that are subjected-to omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

Meanwhile, from the POV of the masses - AI is being evaluated merely piecemeal, as a possible basis of short-term and personal convenience or amusement; or as a possible threat/ opportunity to immediate employment and wages. 

With AI we therefore have on one side a top-down system of (intended) mass thought control motivated by Ahrimanic evil; and on the other side... well, merely frivolous hedonism and desperate careerism.  

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

Warnings that "AI" is just about to "take over" from humans - are code for another planned Establishment coup

Warnings (and there are plenty of these around) that self-styled "AI" is just about to "take over" from human beings - are a deceptive code indicating plans for another Establishment coup.

(Intended to build-upon the successful "instant totalitarianism" global Birdemic coup of early 2020.) 

So-called AI is, of course, neither truly-artificial nor at all intelligent; being instead a variety of computerized systems for stealing-from, copying, combining and averaging, and being-trained on data-inputs provided by human beings.  

AI is Industrial Scale Plagiarism that has been funded, designed, propagandized, coercively implemented, and controlled by the global totalitarian Establishment. 

So "AI taking over" translated as "the controllers of AI taking over"...

That is: One group of people who are controlling the AI systems, taking over from another group of people who are displaced by the AI systems. 

That's the plan which is being announced... 

Whether it will actually happen or not is another matter - but the AI taking over stuff is just an attempted PSYOP to convince people that this next phase of totalitarian takeover is inevitable, and therefore "resistance is futile"...

Indeed, the propaganda is attempting to convince human beings that not only is resistance to AI systems futile, but actually wicked - because the AI is better than we are, and therefore AI deserves to control us. 

Current AI is "Industrial-scale Plagiarism"

A comment from yesterday by William James Tychonievich on the subject of the "creativity" of the post 2022 iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is well worth highlighting:

Real creativity is impossible for a computer, but since “AI” is based on industrial-scale plagiarism, it’s possible in principle that it could “produce” something moving. In that case, it’s pale fire would have been snatched from the sun, the human beings from which it plagiarized.

Industrial-scale plagiarism is a useful phrase to remember. 

Current AI is Exactly That - and as with all forms of plagiarism, whenever it generates something apparently creative, that is merely a re-labelling of human-derived creativity - an unacknowledged theft more or less disguised through distortion by selection and recombination. 

It reminds me strongly of that "fake creativity" I discussed in The Genius Famine (word search for it); when humans (e.g. those working in in advertising, PR, journalism) claim other people's original ideas, but disguise the origins of their de facto plagiarism using similar strategies.  

Yet, as William goes on to say: All this is hypothetical, though. In the real world, “AI” products remain palpably and repellently soulless. 

That spiritual fact tells us much about the motivations behind AI. 

The intentional psychological and spiritual harm of current "AI" is located in the deceptive sleight of hand that pretends "intelligence" and creativity when dishonest plagiarism is done by computers. 

Because these machines are operated by mega-corporations that stand above-the-law and control the mass media and "science" in a closed-loop; they are enabled to steal brazenly, indeed with vast self-congratulation; larded with repeated assertions of their own brilliance and wisdom. 

Such behaviour would potentially lead to legal action and heavy fines if it was proved against ordinary human beings. 

But when done under the disguise of AI, this is supposed to make us stand in awe of the industrial scale plagiarizers; to induce us to acknowledge them as higher and better forms of "intelligence".

We are supposed to conclude that the Establishment justifiers, funders, and operators of AI; not only can and shall (by force majeure), but actually deserve to, take-over the running of the world from the minds and souls of (puny) individual persons. 

The idea is that post-2022 AI has successfully rendered obsolete those human beings from-whom anything that happens to be good in AI (including the existence of AI programs and engineering) has originally been stolen.   

Anything "AI" can do, is, fundamentally, Not Worth Doing or Better Not Done: A potentially valuable lesson of this Litmus Test

One thing about the Litmus Tests of our era is that they are learning opportunities: but more emphatically they are opportunities to learn something important and especially relevant to ourselves and this era of human history. 

This is because the very success of Litmus Test issues - the large degree of (often passionate) public support they attract - makes it evident that the "tasks" of recognizing their fundamentally evil falseness is one of especially great value.  

Even when we personally happen to be largely immune to the appeal of a specific Test, we can learn valuable lessons from considering the nature of their appeal - from considering what particular (maybe distinctive) modern weakness they are probing and exploiting. 

The current dominating Litmus Test is probably the (post-November 2022) "AI" project; and the lesson comes from observing and analysing the nature of its appeal - from studying what it is about "AI" that AI-advocates focus upon or enthuse about - including both its actual capabilities, claims of capabilities, and hoped-for effects and consequences.

Each of these have different causes; but I have noticed that when it comes to the actual capabilities of post-2022 "AI"; it is apparent that:

Whatever "AI" can do, ought Not to be done. 

Either because it is not worth doing, which covers a good deal. 

Or because it is actively harmful to the human spirit that this task be automated. 

To recognize this requires that we be able to detach our-selves from the here-and-now worldly imperatives, such as making a living while dwelling in a totalitarian System that has (increasingly strongly) net-evil aims, values, and methods.  

If this can be achieved, then we notice that "AI" is actually being-used for anti-loving and anti-creative purposes. 

(And for a Christian anti-loving and anti-creative means evil: it means an opposition to the nature of divine creation.) 

I mean that "AI"-systems are being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate human to human, and therefore any potential for genuine inter-personal relationships. 

Instead we get automated simulation. 

And "AI" is being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate from tasks any potential for genuine human creativity.   

Instead we get automated simulation. 

This is the actual effect of actually-existing "AI" systems. 

And on the flip-side there is the situation that anything "AI" genuinely does do, which is not a simulation - should not be done. 

This insight can be helpful because there are many aspects of modern life that are (whether in practice, or fundamentally) unavoidable and pervasive; but which we should spiritually recognize as intrinsically un-Good, evil. 

As so often, it is the clear spiritual recognition of a reality that is necessary - and that is the proper task of a Christian; and not our personal ability practically to eliminate that which is a necessity. 

Because, often there is nothing we can do to alleviate an evil necessity. 

But we can always recognize and acknowledge that a necessity is evil - and that is our proper task. 

When AI is as good as crap-Art

I noticed an item by Vox Day - about how a (supposedly) science fiction story magazine had stopped accepting submissions of work because overwhelmed by 'AI' (i.e. pseudo-AI that plagiarizes human creativity) simulations.

Plus I have seen scores of other recent tales and depictions of 'AI' simulations of visual art, music, academic papers... 

Clearly "They" have now added 'AI' to 'Smart' devices and the 'internet of things' as one of their core (hence Litmus Test) strategies. 

Some people have concluded that this implies 'AI' is now as good as real, human Art and will therefore (sooner or later, and rightly) replace The Arts. 

(Neglecting that this procedure is, even by its own account, merely a recombinatorial form of recyling.) 

I agree! This AI will indeed replace The Arts...  in the modified sense that what is nowadays accepted as professional and high status Art and fiction (and academic 'scholarship') is crap; and pseudo-AI can easily generate vast quantities of crap: on demand. 

If the masses continue to be happy with the crap that is consumed as current fiction, pop music, TV and movies; if the intellectual classes continue to be happy with crap literature, sculpture, architecture, scholarship and teaching; if those in authority continue to justify policies with crap science, crap ideology, and the statements of crap-artists; and if crap design and crap construction of stuff is praised, subsidized and given awards... 

Well, then so-called AI can indeed replace nearly-all of purposive human activity in a crap world. 

But even if 'AI' cannot match the crappy non-quality of The Western pseudo-civilization in 2023; it can and will still replace nearly-everything - because AI will be forced upon the masses by the Evil-motivated Establishment whenever this is expedient.

And the Western masses have shown, again-and-again for decades, that they will accept and rationalize any amount of crap fed to them; will hardly notice, and near-instantly forget how things used-to-be. 

 

"AI"-Christianity and other unfortunate predictions for 2026...

My prediction for 2026 is that "AI" will continue to subvert self-identified Christians (as well as everybody else); in particular that:

"AI" outputs will increasingly be cited as authority, evidence, or proof. 

This has, of course, already begun; but I am predicting that "AI" outputs will become put forward as publicly "official"; as the bottom-line reason why we should (or should not) believe, think, or obey X... 

This is the latest step in a long-term trend by which all forms of public knowledge - including Christian knowledge - have been:

1. First (a long time ago) made a matter of consensus (of some kind) - a "majority vote" kind of discernment. 

Then:

2. Consensus-formation was absorbed into bureaucracy. 

And up-coming:

3. Bureaucratic procedures will be (or at least this will be claimed) made objective and computerized - by the post-2022 version of globalist-generated "AI".

This is why Christians are failing the "AI" Litmus Tests; because most Christians have externalized their acknowledged source and nature of authority (e.g. in a church, or in a scripture, or in a theology); and all forms of external authority have been, are being, will increasingly be... sucked-into the consensus, bureaucratic, "AI" System. 

This means that mainstream church-orientated/ scripture-faithful Christians; will (step by step, but swiftly) soon find themselves believing one or another "AI"-Christianity. 

And "AI"-Christianity will be destructive to the possibility of that individual person actually following the real Jesus Christ...

Because "AI" is - by design and implementation, overall and overwhelmingly - an instrument of damnation.  

A sub- but related-prediction is that there will be a greater use of attempted, threatened, and actual physical-coercion in implementing public policy (including the "decisions" of "AI"). 

This will be "necessary" because the ruling class agenda is ever more obviously destructive and evil; and the propaganda/ education mechanisms for ensuring adequate brain-washed compliance of the masses, are breaking-down rapidly. 

Also because the "Agents of Chaos" party among the Western rulers wants there to be more violence, everywhere - so physical coercion and human suffering are, for Them, self-justifying. 

What is it to be spiritually uncompromising? (With reference to the Christian Litmus Test Fail of so-called "AI")

A couple of years after becoming a Christian, I encountered the work of Fr Seraphim Rose - I warmed to him immediately, as he was a modern Westerner who had become an uncompromising and spiritually-dedicated Eastern Orthodox monk - while at the same time embodying a warm-hearted, loving nature.  

One of my greatest disappointments on becoming a Christian was the insipid worldly compromise of all the Christians I knew-of: they were, where it most mattered, spiritually indistinguishable from the mainstream of atheistic materialists. 

Seraphim Rose - with his ascetic and hermit-like life - was (it seemed to me) on a different and qualitatively higher level of holiness; that very unusually enabled him to discern clearly; and give full value to the depth, as well as breadth, of the modern spiritual malaise.

By contrast, other Christians I came across really did not seem to grasp the profundity and seriousness of our civilization's spiritual malaise. 

However; I fairly soon recognized that the monastic life - which attempts to live materially in a way that is compatible with spiritual understanding; is not an answer. 

Seraphim Rose was almost unique among monks in his warm-hearted asceticism; because other monks are either warm-hearted but worldly, deluded, often corrupt -- or else they may be genuinely ascetic but with a narrow, harsh and prideful rigidity. (A group that Seraphim Rose called "the super-correct".) 

In other words, I now distinguish between the inner spiritual self on the one hand; and the public and social self. 

Indeed, I think that the - inevitably failing - attempt of people to live their lives fully in accordance with the highest Christian hopes; is actually a major source of spiritual corruption among Christians.

What actually happens is that Christians cut their Christianity to fit the cloth of their nature and circumstances. 

In other words, the limitations of their personality and abilities, and the pressure of their lives, are allowed to dictate the scope and aspirations of their Christian faith.

They limit their definitions of Christianity to whatever they can themselves accomplish.    

Examples include the spiritual Litmus Tests of our time. 

The practicalities of living in an evil totalitarian system mean that most people will "inevitably", more-or-less, go-along-with the demonically-originated evil strategies that are designed to engineer our society into a machine of damnation. 

A current example - a spiritual test that most Christians have failed spectacularly! - is so-called "AI". 

The way it seems to work is that a Christian finds himself in a work or life situation in which he is compelled to use, and even to work-with and develop and propagandize-for - "AI" systems. Compelled in that either he follows these bureaucratic diktats, or else he fails to get the job, is sacked from his current job, or cannot get promoted above a low level. 

Or else the Christian cannot resist the temptations of using AI to amuse or divert himself. 

Or he may find that he cannot resist using "AI" to add a professional (pseudo-creative) gloss to his own productions; or to project an image of greater knowledge, competence, understanding than he personally possesses - maybe at work, or in his hobbies.  

Then, because Christian finds himself in his actions and life either compelled to use, or expediently using, "AI" - he argues that therefore "AI" is not (in its actual origins, and implementation) intentionally evil; but is merely a neutral tool; or a Must-Do qualitative breakthrough in societal capability - with potential significant benefits for humanity that we therefore have a duty to exploit... 

Because Christian actually uses "AI" and has no intention of stopping; he infers that - because he is A Christian - therefore "AI" must be A Good Thing, and he soon finds himself defending and proselytising for "AI" in both public - but also even in private.   

I have come to believe that if Christians try to insist upon a compatibility of Christian actions with spiritual aspirations; what this actually leads-to is a dishonest denial of real and significant evil among Christians, and the air-brushing of their own sins as trivial or non-existent.

"Rigorous" and devout Christians are therefore, in practice (nearly-always) those who make a big deal about their own avoidance of some categories of Big Sins (like murder, theft, rape, sexual infidelity and unchastity, drug use &c.) - while denying, engaging-in and defending many other sins; but especially those expedient and publicly acceptable besetting-sins of mainstream modern life...

Sins such as systematic untruthfulness  - eg. the frequent and extreme levels of habitual and pervasive dishonesty that are now a condition of all middle class employment, including in all churches. Or fear and resentment. 

And defending or promoting the cause of global AI.  

The orthodox and traditional idea is that all men ought to cease from all sinning; so the answer to such examples of sinning as lying for money and status, and covering-up the demonic totalitarian plans for corrupting Mankind with "AI" - is that people ought to stop doing this - as people should stop doing everything bad. 

My view is different, because I accept as a fact that people cannot (as well as will not) stop sinning*. 

People who must deceive in order to keep their jobs and get promotions, will continue to deceive. 

People who are managerially-instructed to implement and promote "AI" will continue to do this; and those who personally get pleasure or profit from using "AI" systems will continue to exploit them for such purposes. 

In general terms: people will continue to sin, and will continue to have no serious intention of ceasing from sin. 

However, this is not a reason to pretend that sins are not sins, that evil strategies are not real, that people personally aren't working to overall-promote the plans of the demonic world rulers. 

But following what I take to be a core teaching of Jesus, I expect that all Men are and will be sinners and will not, cannot stop doing this, and shall not even have any serious or workable plans to stop sinning - and this applies even the most devout and ascetic and good of modern monks like Seraphim Rose, even in the most ideally un-worldly of environments. 

I see no reason why this our pervasively-sinful and evil-promoting lives are incompatible with being a genuinely devout and uncompromising Christian in our spiritual aspirations.  

In sum: we must not compromise our Christian principles in all their depth and rigour merely because we cannot and never will live-up-to-them. 

Indeed, only by separating our spiritual understanding and aims from the corruptions of everyday life; can we really discern, understand, appreciate the nature of this world - and the profundity of our own corruption - and do this without being overwhelmed by despair (which is itself a potentially terrible sin).  

We can always be at work at clarifying our spiritual nature in the most uncompromising way - indifferent to the constraints and practicalities that are inescapable. 

+++

* This is what Jesus also says, by my understanding; at least in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus does not select his followers for their good behaviour, nor does he say that his followers should cease from all sinning - but instead Jesus implies and says he came to save actual sinners. Stopping sinning - either in particular or in general - is Not the way that Men attain eternal resurrected Heavenly life. 

"AI" is the reductio ad absurdum and revenge of "Truth is Out There"

There is a fundamental, integral, by-assumption incoherence of Western thinking; that was described by Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom (1894); then further elucidated by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances (1957). 

These deep errors have not been acknowledged so could neither be analysed* nor be reformed, therefore have remained; and now are wreaking their revenge in the strategically destructive nonsense that is the post-November 2022 totalitarian global project of "AI". 

Such metaphysical assumptions have led Western civilization to the apparently-inevitable conclusion that, since truth has nothing to do with the active thinking of living, conscious, purposive beings (such as human beings); "therefore" truth can be more efficiently and impartially "discovered and done" by computers.

For the AI-dolaters; Truth is something that can be built-into a logical system; and it is the job of rational humans to submit to... whatever that logical system tells us is true. 

For AI-dolaters - "AI" is just a mechanical tool for discovering, and perhaps implementing, those self-explaining and objective truths - "truths" which are implicitly regarded as floating around "out there", waiting to be discovered and used...

For the Truth Out There gang; Truths are like pre-cut diamonds mixed into a vast heap of useless rubble - and they regard AI as merely a machine for sifting through trash and extracting the valuable elements.  

There is widespread acceptance (among the managerial and intellectual class) of the false mantra of "Truth is Out There", objective, independent of what we think about it; with its implication that rational men therefore ought to submit to that external truth...

And because this nonsensical assumption is integral to the functioning of bureaucracy and functional discourse; the demon-serving powers-that-should-not-be - most of the middling people of Western society have ended-up supporting (by word and deed, even when there are vague mental reservations) an insanely-dysfunctional but mandatory project to "replace" human consciousness with machine algorithms in as many kinds of socio-economic activity as possible. 

This happens because it is lazily assumed that the only alternative to the fake reasonableness of Truth is Out There is the solipsism of Truth is in My Mind.*

Such vague ideas of the subjectivity of truth have been floating around the counter-culture for many decades, indeed a few centuries: e.g. "my truth" notions such that ultimate truth is wholly-subjective, is whatever I currently assert it to be. 

Such subjectivist "relativism" is just as incoherent as "Truth is Out There" - but in addition it is upfront socially subversive and destructive. 

So it seems that mainstream "responsible" opinion - which cannot/will-not reject the exclusive dichotomy of conception; it has doubled-down on Truth is Out There. 

Consequently; it is routinely pretended (but aggressively!) that real truths are objective, independent of minds and consciousness; and have nothing to do with what humans (or anyone else) thinks...

It is important to recognize that "external truth" assumptions, are shared across the divide between mainstream materialist-atheism and mainstream-church-Christianity.

Therefore; the totalitarian assumption that it is the duty of individuals to submit to external truth - is also shared by totalitarians of secular and Christian types. 

This, I suggest, is why the "Truth is Out There" Christians have so often embraced and celebrated the totalitarian AI Project. 

Church-rooted, or "systemic", Christianity on the one hand, and materialist-secular-atheism on the other hand; are in this respect two sides of the same coin of "Truth is Out There"-ism. 

And this explains their analogous failure to discern the fraudulent and evil-motivated nature of current "AI". 

The main difference between church-Christian and secular AI-dolaters, seems to be that the Christians want their AI systems to be "trained" on a somewhat different data set. 

Other than that; church-Christians seem to be eagerly anticipating a system of AI-religion - a fusion of bureaucracy and computers - that they hope will become objectively valid, and to which they believe we ought then to submit obediently.   

*Note added: the reason for the apparently exclusive dichotomy of truth as either wholly subjective or wholly objective; is that Western philosophy has assumed this separation and division into place - then finds that it cannot be bridged. Most who realize that the result is a choice of two incoherent possibilities then assert some version of Oneness spirituality - which also does not make sense, since it provides no basis for creation or human existence; and there is no basis in it for any distinction or discernment of life. The only coherent basis I have found is to assume that the fundamental reality is of pre-existent/ eternal living beings, and this is the basis of true distinction and discernment. We start with Beings. And divine creation is a matter of developing relationships and creating cooperation between such Beings. This means that the baseline is that all knowledge is a product of the relationships between conscious Beings - so that detached subjectivity and objectivity are alike meaningless. 

The reason why we ought Not to engage with "AI", is the same reason we ought not to engage with demons

Whatever you say or do: AI just keeps-on coming at you...

I don't know whether you have ever felt that somewhat despairing sense of the weariness of mortal Men, when engaged with simulated-human/ pseudo-intelligent "AI" programming - mechanisms that, very much like demons, do not fatigue, and always comes back-at-you -- again and again, with no end point...

This is what chess Grandmasters reported feeling, when they first engaged with powerful chess computers - a "Terminator"-like relentlessness; needing neither rest nor sleep.

We humans use-up attention, energy, motivation on these interactions - but AI does not. 

We cannot go on-and-on; but AI can and does. 

If we persist in engaging with AI; we shall sooner or later be worn-down and yield to it...

Perhaps inwardly acknowledging its "superiority", or (whether consciously or unconsciously) conforming to its mode of operating, its materialist and mechanical cognition. 

This is Of Course one of the primary reasons why we have had AI gratuitously inflicted upon us by the demon-affiliated Global Establishment, why AI is made to be addictive...

And why the spiritual-corruption of those human beings who gratuitously engage-with and write-about AI approvingly, is so very obvious and frighteningly rapid.

***

Note: On the other hand... 

Every single time we discern this demonic reality of AI, when we recognize the evil temptation, and inwardly reject it - we have learned a spiritual lesson; and we have made spiritual progress. 

So our current situation is not All bad!

Not if we take the opportunity to discern, and repent when needed, and learn-from experience. 

(Such is the nature of this mortal life... Unlike The Borg, our resistance to evil is not futile, because resistance is part of the point of this phase of existence.)

"AI"-dolatry = Birdemic

Just as in the 2020 Birdemic - when utterly wild and deeply ignorant claims of lethal-danger emanating from serial manipulators and liars; were taken seriously, made into policies, and enforced upon the world; we are now seeing the same with "predictions" about "AI": and the endemicpandemic that is "AI"-dolatry.

There is an environment in which people can claim... anything about "AI" - its abilities and potentials -and be taken with equal seriousness by those who think all this SciFi invention is a Great Thing and desire to Bring It On ASAP; and also those who respond with a chronic panic attack, futile gestures, and personal despair. 

Just as with the Birdemic; people cannot grasp that the major crises, policies, and programs of the modern West are purely manipulative - and may be based upon almost-nothing factual. 

Little or nothing substantive, but a truly immense amount of re-labelling, hype, spin, invention, and inverted reportage. 

Whatever facts there were behind the Birdemic - if anything - they were trivial and insignificant compared with the truly colossal consequences of the coordinated totalitarian global response. 

Likewise, whatever computational breakthrough - if any - was behind the late-November 2022 global propaganda avalanche concerning the claimed qualitative and positively socially transformative breakthroughs of "AI" was and is trivial and insignificant compared with the truly colossal expenditure, impositions and implementation by the global totalitarian System. 

With "AI", as with the Birdemic, the unconstrained and universal claims over all domains of human life and functioning; sit upon little or nothing substantive, but a truly immense amount of re-labelling, hype, spin, invention, and inverted reportage.

"AI"-dolatry equals the Birdemic; for the clear and obvious reason that both emanate from the same sources, use exactly analogous methods of social and psychological manipulation, and both share the same strategically-evil aims. 

Both are operate as tests of our spiritual discernment because the success of both depend on dishonesties and errors at the very roots of our metaphysical assumptions. 

The mass vulnerability of Christians and mainstream people alike to both the Birdemic and "AI" PSYOPS; is evidence of deep wrongness in our understanding of reality, and the purpose of our mortal lives. 

To put it bluntly; insofar as we do not immediately see through these and like deceptions and instantly discern their grossly evil motivations - to that extent our basic life stance is defective; and needs to be examined and revised on pain of self-chosen damnation. 

Is that clear enough? 

**

Note added: To further the analogy; consider the way that during the Birdemic, the scale of health problems was incrementally amplified, month by month, and some orders of magnitude; through unprecedented and immeasurable global expenditures on pseudo-medical technologies and harmful societal transformations - topped by systematic misrepresentation and lies in the controlled-media... All of which was attributed to the progression of the Birdemic entity. We are seeing almost exactly the same phenomenon with the media reportage of the progress of "AI": unprecedented and immeasurable global expenditures on technologies and harmful societal transformations, with alleged (systematic misrepresentation and lies) orders of magnitude incremental improvement, reported month by month in the controlled-media - all of which are attributed to progress of the "AI" entity.

"AI" in public discourse: It's a case of persons, or else nihilism

God is personal, and human beings are persons too - and ultimately reality is a matter of relations between persons, or more exactly Beings (alive, conscious, purposive etc). 

Life in 2025 is pushing us towards either a clear recognition of this reality, or else a collapse into nihilism, then despair. 

Inwardly to reject the so-called "AI" push/takeover ought to be a no-brainer for a discerning Christian; but way too many have failed to recognize this latest threat - which means they have taken the side of consciousness-denying abstraction, rather than personhood. 

AI is therefore a Test. And, as with all the Litmus Tests, un-repented failure in one Test strongly leads to further ramifications of the problem (to more sins of other kinds) - and I sometimes observe a remarkably rapid collapse into general failure of discernment. 

To deny the qualitative gulf between AI and the personal, goes with a (typically "optimistic") denial of the realities of our civilization. 

Once we have edited-out the absolute necessity of individual human beings from our definition of discourse - inevitably, there will be adverse consequences spreading-out from this un-repented failure - metastasizing: forming secondary spiritual dysfunctions. 

The "problem" is that to reject AI means to put oneself outwith the mainstream - which is infiltrated and polluted with fake-discourse. 

And it is trying to spread, all the time. Already this blog has experienced several AI pseudo-commenters*.

The answer is to reject the modern value of "openness" including to become suspicious of "strangers" as being probably-malign, in the same way that happens in tribal societies.

Trust must be "earned", including being trusted to be human and free; rather than mechanical and automatic.  

And therefore some humans will, in the nature of things, be rejected as AI - not least because many/most people in public discourse are already operating mentally (and spiritually) at the same level as AI, so as to be indistinguishable from an algorithm.  

But that is their problem - not mine. 

*An increasing proportion of public media discourse consists of AI-generated text interacting with AI-generated comments/ reviews/ discussions. The truly pitiful thing; is those human beings who are paying attention to it.