The Guardian has published a curious article featuring Patrick Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel—who was forced out of his position last year and sued by shareholders. Gelsinger has now taken the reins of Gloo, a Christian-oriented company with the mission to “shape technology as a force for good” as their page’s mission statement reads, by ‘suffusing faith’ into AI systems and promoting Christian principles in the agnostic halls of Silicon Valley.
“My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return,” he said.
Quite the eye-grabbing quote! Briefly browsing through the company’s website, their aim seems to be to provide technological tools and services for churches and non-profit organizations—the kind of clients, I’d assume, that would feel certain apprehension by using Musk’s ‘Mecha-Hitler’ algorithm.
But is Gloo’s end goal to create a ‘Christbot’? Their website doesn’t expressly mention it, emphasizing instead their quest for what they call “human flourishing” consisting of seven core principles: Character, Relationships, Happiness, Meaning, Health (Physical and Mental), Finances, and Faith.
Faith is described as “communion with God or the transcendent” and includes spiritual formation and religious engagement, serving as elements of human flourishing.
Source: gloo.com
If they end up building a Christbot, and if that is what Gelsinger envisions as the fulfilment of the Second Coming prophecy, this would hardly be the first time that American Christians have tried to give the Almighty a hand, to hasten the time schedule for the Second Coming through technological means.
As far back as the XIXth century, spiritualist minister John Murray Spear—who was an active abolitionist and helped to oversee the stretch of the Underground Railroad which ran through Boston—claimed to have received directions from illustrious spirits such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to build “God’s last, best gift to man”: an electric-based, perpetual motion device that would become a ‘living machine’ with the divine purpose to end Man’s toil upon this Earth, and bring about a new utopia of leisure to humanity (sounds familiar?).
The God Machine would also be able to connect with the etheric transmissions of all humankind and help reshape the world through them. A kind of steampunk Ark of the Covenant, if you will, and Spear compared his envisioned contraption to Jesus Christ himself.
Alas, after wasting thousands of dollars building the contraption according to ‘channeled’ specifications, followed by a ritual with a designated “New Mary” with the purpose to imbue the machine with life, Spear’s ‘electrical infant’ remained inert and it was subsequently destroyed by opponent spiritualists—though some people suspected Spear himself dismantled his own creation to prevent further embarrassment.
With the world shifting from the industrial age to modern times, the rise of new technologies that seemed almost magical in nature inspired both wonder and fear upon society. As Michael Chrichton was writing his cautionary Jurassic Park to warn about the terrifying power of genetic engineering—which, ironically, is now being used by some companies as a roadmap to ‘de-extinction’—conspiracy theories began to emerge about a supposed attempt to create a clone of Jesus using genetic material retrieved from holy relics, like the controversial shroud of Turin which is largely considered to be a medieval hoax (some even attribute it to Leonardo DaVinci).
Star Trek fans will no doubt remember the New Generation episode “Rightful Heir,” in which Lieutenant Worf confronts a Klingon claiming to be the embodiment of Kahless, the warrior messiah who founded the Klingon empire according to their ancient religion, and who has come back from the afterlife to fulfill an ancient legend. In the end (spoilers!) this Klingon messiah turns out to be a clone created using the blood found in the dagger of the real Kahless, which was kept as a relic in a temple for thousands of years.
“Rightful Heir” is probably the first sci-fi story exploiting the idea of a messianic figure brought about through the use of genetic science, either to usher a heavenly age upon the world, or to deceive mankind by presenting a false messiah who would actually serve a demonic agenda: the Antichrist. Several other examples have surfaced over the years, including the Christ Clone Trilogy, and The Devil Conspiracy.
Readers might consider it unfair that I mix conspiracy theories which inspired sci-fi tropes with actual historical events (Spear) and contemporary news (Gelsinger). But let us not forget that Art always preclude real Science, and that many of the things pursued by Silicon Valley today—computer-brain interfaces, neurological upgrades, cybernetic organisms, robotic assistants, super artificial intelligence, etc—were inspired by the science fiction the CEOs of those companies were exposed to when they were young.
Taking aside the glaring contradiction of trying to help humanity ‘flourish’ through exploitative technology (AI) that ravages the environment and depends on stolen labor—perhaps not so contradictory, for a religion that saw no problem in bringing the ‘light’ of the Cross to the world through the ‘might’ of the Sword—in an age in which the lines between Church and State are getting blurrier in the United States, Gloo’s mission fills me with apprehension.
What if US lawmakers sympathetic to Gelsinger’s goals start using Gloo’s AI to help them make policy decisions? Is it so hard to conceive a scenario in which a rogue Christbot ends up advising launching nukes into the Holy Land to pave the way for the final battle of Armageddon? That, after all, would be the ultimate technological hastening of the End Times according to the views of some fundamentalist Christians.
Ever since the days of Gutenberg there has been an interesting connection between Religion and Technology, and how each influences the other. There are even people, like Diana Walsh Pasulka, who consider Technology one of the ways by which the Divine manifests into this world; a position that many in Silicon Valley seem to harbor according to her latest book.
It is nevertheless regrettable that our continuous obsession with Technology and our attempts to use it, either to bring about a spark of divinity into this world —or to assert our own god-like power— often comes at the cost of what all people of faith should recognize as the foremost presence of the divine: Nature.
“By their fruit, ye shall know them” say the Scriptures. So far the fruit of AI looks golden on the outside, but worm-riddled on the inside—kind of like the work of the Antichrist.
