Is artificial intelligence the “beginning of the end” for humanity? Actor/producer James Woods thinks so. The conservative Christian actor is the latest big name to express his deep fears about AI as some become increasingly worried by the mad rush to create ever more powerful AI. Woods’s caution provides a good opportunity to examine the root of the problem: many AI advocates are atheists whose measure of the value of human life is purely utilitarian.
”To understand AI, imagine the people who managed ‘free speech’ on Twitter (before its liberation) engineering the software of this uncontrollable beast. It’s only what it is programmed to be,” Woods tweeted May 1. “I personally believe AI is indeed the beginning of the end.”
To understand AI, imagine the people who managed “free speech” on Twitter (before its liberation) engineering the software of this uncontrollable beast. It’s only what it is programmed to be.
I personally believe AI is indeed the beginning of the end. https://t.co/QRDnUFxznz
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 1, 2023
Woods was commenting on an article from Fox News noting that the late theoretical physicist and atheist apologist Stephen Hawking issued the same warning about AI progress spelling doom for humanity. Fox said that Hawking’s posthumously published book Brief Answers to the Big Questions issued a warning about AI. In that book, Hawking wrote that AI could “spell the end of the human race” and that “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”
He also claimed that “We may face an intelligence explosion that ultimately results in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails,” making it “our worst mistake ever.” Hawking’s warning is especially significant since he personally used AI to communicate due to complications from his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
It is particularly interesting to me that Hawking wrote this caution about AI because many of the individuals touting AI in Big Tech, government, or media are atheists with a very utilitarian view of human life. They don’t value individual humans, except as they perceive those humans as being useful to them. This is true of some ostensibly religious individuals too, however, such as the radical Muslim Ayatollah Khamenei.
The COVID-19 lockdowns that were continued long after it was obvious they caused far more harm than good, the abortion of many millions of babies worldwide, the destructive transgender craze, devastating conflicts and persecutions such as the Uyghur genocide, the genocide of Christians in Nigeria and other African countries, the Ukraine war… there are so many instances of anti-God or anti-Christian disdain for the deaths and pains of thousands or millions of people.
The point is that when the Judeo-Christian appreciation for the value of every human life, regardless of perceived “utility,” is rejected, the danger posed to humanity as a whole is inevitable. AI is just the latest and most powerful tool the utilitarians have to “replace” humans.
Bill Gates openly said in 2010 he wanted to reduce world population by 10% to 15%, and his company Microsoft is one of the organizations expanding its AI projects. Twitter and Facebook cooperated with governments to censor free speech and suppress information about the harms of transgenderism, COVID-19 vaccines, abortion, etc., and now Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are very enthusiastic for AI. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the greatest mass murderer in history, and it is now trying to control and manipulate AI. It is true that the same entities that directly murdered large numbers of people, pushed destructive policies, or promoted the overpopulation myth are now the most invested in AI. There truly is a connection between AI and depopulation.
Woods, on the other hand, is a Catholic. We Catholics believe in the irreplaceable uniqueness of every human life. For Jews and Christians, each person is valuable ultimately because he has a soul, created by God. This is in contrast to the modern atheist utilitarianism, which measures the value of everything and everyone by efficiency. For many elites now, AI would automatically be “superior” to humans by being more efficient. That is the sort of standard even Hawking had when he foresaw AI “replacing” humanity, since he predicted AI being more “intelligent” — i.e. far more efficient at processing information and producing content — than humans. Hawking was definitely right about the dangers of AI, but he was part of the problem: a prominent thinker of the movement that led us to this point.
Meanwhile, transhumanists like Elon Musk and Klaus Schwab believe humans can be “improved” with microchips and other tech. The idea that humans can make God’s creation “better” by blending the biological and technological is a very dangerous ideology. Its proponents might believe they are pro-human, but their measure for what makes humans valuable is a steep and slippery slope.
Not to mention that AI could give tech giants and governments more power than ever before. In China, for instance, the government uses AI to increase its totalitarian surveillance of the population.
I happen to believe that AI will never be “better” than humans at everything. AI can “write” original content or imitate the style of great writers or artists, but it can never spontaneously generate the equivalent of a Michelangelo, a Virgil, a G.K. Chesterton, or a Frederick Douglass. Nor will AI ever have a God-given soul as humans do. Humans are made in the image and likeness of God, but AI is made in the image and likeness of whoever programs it — and, as we’re seeing with ChatGPT, that can make it a powerful force for evil and lies.
But AI will be able to create content that will be more than satisfactory to many people, and that will provide the illusion of human-like originality and thought — at a much faster rate than humans. Therefore, many jobs will become “obsolete,” according to the groups that push the Great Reset and the 2030 Agenda.
And that is why individuals from James Woods to Stephen Hawking see AI as so dangerous. They have warned us, and we had better give heed to their warning before it’s too late to act on that warning.