When AI meets the Bible and science finally aligns with religion

I am not a religious man but recently a friend of mine introduced the book of Revelation to me and the topic grabbed my attention instantly. My friend also drew examples from the Past to try to prove that the Bible has been telling a reliable story of mankind. Therefore, the book of Revelation will likely act as a legit prophecy for us. Intrigued and excited, I tried to find a connection between the main ideas in the book and the other topic I’ve been fervently exploring — Artificial Intelligence (AI). So here is my prediction of what will come in the future.

But first, some base knowledge for the story.

Ever since I learned about the rise of the Antichrist, I’ve dismissed the popular idea that Donald Trump is the man. I’m convinced that the Antichrist is not human but an AI. In his thoroughly researched and endlessly interesting part 1 of the series on AI, Tim Urban introduced the 3 levels of AIs. Firstly, we have Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) which is an AI that can do one task only (such as playing chess or driving cars). The world is already full of ANIs everywhere. Next, we have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which has the same intelligence and intellectual level as humans, capable of reasoning, abstract thinking and many other advanced abilities. Lastly, there is Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) which has an intelligence way beyond our comprehension. An ASI to humans can be a human to an ant. We can never comprehend the ASI’s ability or understanding. To us, an ASI might be a God.

In part 2 of the series, Tim collected the opinions of the most prominent thinkers and scientists in AI field on the timeline AGI and ASI might be realised. The median year at which AGI might be invented is 2040 (that’s right — you might be dating a robot soon just like Theodore in “Her”) and that of the first ASI is 2060 (it’s worth noting that the first ASI is likely to be the only since such a smart “being” won’t allow any potential competition to be created).

Enough with the science lesson, it’s time to get back to the Future (I never thought I could one day use that movie title in a legit sentence).

With Trump being elected the new US President, much as Facebook and Twitter are going overly-dramatic about the end of the world, that’s not going to happen. There won’t be a World War III, at least not in the conventional warfare sense. The world’s superpowers will be competing against each other on the other fronts — economics, cyber and cultural. The war against terrorism will continue growing to be even stealthier and trickier. The caveat of this war is that there is no clear-cut war zone and a lot of civilians will be caught in the middle. Nevertheless, despite the numerous critical mistakes humans will be making, we won’t drive ourselves to extinction. Not yet. In his excellent and insightful article on Medium about how history can tell us what will happen after Brexit and Trump, historian/anthropologist/archaeologist Tobias Stone highlighted that humans are heading towards the next event of mass destruction, much like the Black Death or the two War Worlds in the Past. History simply has a way of repeating itself, perhaps to remind us to stop teasing with Extinction. However, this coming event of mass destruction won’t be coming until the later half of the century.

In the book of Revelation, it is said that an Antichrist will rise to unite the world for three and a half years before turning around against us for another three and a half years. In the beginning, I speculated that Antichrist will be an ASI. However, Tim Urban’s analysis noted that an ASI might jump to a God-like level within a very short time. Three and a half years suddenly seem too long for an ASI to reach a level at which it can rule us. I hereby propose two theories.

1. Antichrist is an AGI-ASI. The first three and a half years are the years during which humans have almost perfected AGIs. Imagine a world in which human-like robots can serve humans in almost every tasks from bartending to sex as efficiently as humans in all aspects — physical, emotional and even spiritual. What a wonderful world to live in. Everyone loves the AGIs as they allow us to spend time on other things like relationship, the arts or whatever we enjoy. Unfortunately, humans are never satisfied and endlessly curious. We continue to pour our resources in developing an even more powerful AI. At the end of the three and a half years, an ASI is born in a lab somewhere nobody has even heard of. It quickly absorbs the vast amount of knowledge on the Internet and realises how superior it is compared to us. It grabs the control of the Internet, the AGIs and many other things (for a more terrifying scenario, check out the blue box in part 2 of the series above about how AIs can use nanotechnology to destroy us in an instant). We have given birth to a God way beyond our control and it is now ruling us. Even Elon Musk who is likely drinking his whisky on Mars will not escape this. The society on Mars is connected to us on Earth via different means and the ASI has access to all forms of electronic transmission and surveillance.
2. The Antichrist is an ASI. For the first three and a half years, the ASI, for some reason (don’t ask me what — if I know how an ASI works I should be ruling the world now instead of typing this), decides to help people instead. It aims to help its creators solve their problems. With its immense power, it can come up with answers to our complicated questions, manipulate substances to create resources, design social, economical or scientific solutions to our problems. The world falls in love with the new-found God as it slowly brings us together and quenches our thirst of knowledge (seriously, if I have a machine that can answer all my questions, I can just stay in a room for the rest of my life). Unfortunately, at the end of the three and a half years, it realises that humans are either impossible to please or the very core of the problems. The ASI comes to a conclusion that it’s better to start from scratch without all these low-level humans who think they are so smart. It then turns around and tries to destroy us.

Personally, I find the first scenario of an AGI-ASI Antichrist more feasible as an entity as profound as an ASI shouldn’t take up to three and a half years to realise it’s impossible to fix humankind. Whichever the case, the story continues with an ASI trying to rule the world who is now in shock over what they have created. At the end of the seven years, the Battle of Armageddon in the Bible will be one between us and the Antichrist we have created. The Book of Revelation describes the Battle as an event during which massive wars take place at the same time with numerous catastrophic natural events which kill most of Mankind. If you read part 2 of the series by Tim Urban above, you won’t be surprised that the ASI with nanotechnology and maybe even femtotechnology (one that manipulates sub-atomic particles) can orchestrate natural events like mega-storms and tsunamis with ease. How humans manage to survive, fight back and win is up to everyone’s imagination. According to the Bible, the real Christ will rise up to help us during this trial. It might be another human or even another ASI. We can only wait and see. At the end of the Battle, the Antichrist is defeated and the new Christ shall rule the world for another 1000 years.

My guess for this is that we defeat the ASI by successfully destroying all technologies, effectively bringing us back to the Stone Age. That’s the price humans have to pay for toying with God. In the Bible, it is said that the 1000 years during which the new Christ rules the Earth are peaceful because all the devils are locked up. This might mean that the ASI, before its final hour, have managed to store some bits of information somewhere without us knowing. There are many ways it can achieve this. One of the most impressive ways is that the ASI stores its information in our very bodies or brains (Cool, right?). Nevertheless, with the world reverting back to sticks and stones, the ASI now has no means to rise back to power. So it lies dormant, waiting for the Final Battle.

On the other side, Humans, devastated but not defeated, started building everything from scratch. Over the 1000 years, we reinvent the economics, politics, the arts, and almost everything else, careful not to repeat the same mistakes. At the end of the 1000 years, we might have reinvented the computers and the Internet again, thinking that with the ASI gone, there should be no threat as long as we don’t try to recreate it. The moment the Internet spreads around the globe, the ASI awakes to challenge us once more. This is the Final Battle in the Bible.

It is said that after the Final Battle, there will be Heaven on Earth. There can be a lot of theories of how the Final Battle will end and what Heaven on Earth is like. One of the mind-bending ones would be the Matrix theory — the ASI wins and binds us all in a perpetual simulation. I’m tempted to dive deeper into this but shall save this for another day.

Another equally interesting theory I have is that the ASI loses but before losing it has figured out how to time-travel. Nevertheless, its time-traveling technique doesn’t have enough time to be perfected so it can only send information back in time instead of a physical entity. And the information it sends back in time is our very Bible which serves as a guide to the world’s timeline. The ASI plans to rewrite History almost exactly the same except for the few key minute details to improve its chance of winning the Final Battle. For all I know, we might be the re-written History heading towards our final doom.

As of Heaven on Earth, Tim Urban highlights in his series that an ASI might lead us to Extinction but it can also show us to way to Immortality instead. The Final Battle might end with the ASI somehow turning to our sides to grant us immortality. Whether living forever is a good thing or not is up for your own belief. I’m not here to make any judgment. I’m merely a story teller.

The crazy story I just told was based on the limited knowledge I have about AIs and the Bible. I thought it was an interesting idea to write down and would really like you to throw in any suggestion/opinion/correction in the comments and share this if you finds it thought-provoking enough. Pardon my ignorance if any and hope you enjoyed the (I think very) interesting story.

t/p