An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI: ‘hasten the coming of Christ’s return’

Where there was once purported atheism, there is now “a very loud, very visible and very specifically Christian-inflected technological culture” in Silicon Valley, said Damien Williams, a scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who studies how technologies are shaped by religious beliefs.

Danger. Danger.

a scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Hahahahaha.....wait, was that not a joke?

If he made a Christian AI, it would be shut down within a week for being too woke.

I mean yeah, but you assume it will be trained on the whole bible and not just the parts that enforce his will.
- There will be smiting of immigrants. Yea.

Remember when God said he didn’t want idols made, then he punished the Jews to wander the desert for 40 years.

This gives those vibes.

It feels plain wrong.

Remember when God said he didn’t want idols made
You are about 1700 years late to this argument. Christians reconciled with iconography some time in the Byzantium Era.
And after Protestantism? FFS, can you imagine what Joseph Smith would say about an AI Prophet, after spending half his career reading discs out of a hat with special sunglasses?
- Sorry, totally unrelated but fun memory: Iconoclast was the first word whose unexpected etymology I (mostly) worked out on my own. I was watching a vh1 documentary on iconoclasts, and I’d just had a biology class where I’d learned about acetoclastic bacteria. I had a eureka moment wherein I leapt to the conclusion that “breaking the mold” was an older saying than I expected. I wasn’t totally right on that, but I was still psyched to have broken it down correctly.
- I don't have any problems with building beautiful things like cathedrals or making art in the name of God
  But building oracles and such is gross. The who AI pope question was insane.
  But I will have to read that article deeper, that's an interesting wikipedia link
- ~~discs~~ rocks
  He had a magic rock he put in at hat lol
You REALLY expect conservatives to actually follow the non oppressive sections of the scriptures?
Rotfl
- I think they could use a good 40 years wandering the desert right now.
Also I don’t think Christ would return if we were all being cool to each other, so they’re admitting they’re just trying to push humanity more off track.
How does that help you in God’s judgement? I’m pretty sure disrespecting all of his creation and doing the opposite of everything Jesus stood for won’t go well.
I’m agnostic, but selfishly I would not purposefully try to hasten driving myself to hell/damnation if I believed in it.
Thankfully the values my mom taught me are the same ones Jesus taught: love your neighbour as yourself and do unto others as you would have done to you.
- Thankfully the values my mom taught me are the same ones Jesus taught: love your neighbour as yourself and do unto others as you would have done to you.
  This is what baffles me when my dad argues with me for being left of center.
  You sent me where they taught this, did you not want me to learn it?
  (Also not religious, but kept some of the philosophy)
- How does that help you in God’s judgement?
  "The ends justify the means", or something.
Wandering the desert?
Nay, vibe travelling.

Stop asking "what would Jesus do?", use Jesus API.

JAAS.
- Save your soul for only 20.99 a month… wait I guess this isn’t really that new.
AI Jesus will tell you to switch to a eastern religion.

Curing cancer? Nooo

Protecting children from gun shots? Nooo

Making sure children are educated and fed? Nooo

Let's build a fucking ball room and create a Jesus chat bot -- YES

I cannot believe that this is the future we were waiting for.

Why are the American religious right so fixated on the rapture? It's a death cult sprawling across the nation like a cancer.

Because it gives them the ability to let themselves off the hook for participating in the destruction of the planet.
- Destruction of the planet, hardly. The earth has and will shrug of worse than humanity. Thinking otherwise is giving humanity too much credit.
  Destruction of humanity is more likely. We are actively making the earth worse for us, and many other species. But there are many more which will survive and thrive after we destroy ourselves.
- There’s also the childish desire for an “I told you so” as they watch anyone they don’t like being sent to hell.
These people think they're in the end times because the world is in a garbage fire state, that they probably helped cause, and now they want out instead of doing literally anything else, including just not making it worse.
Because they think that they're going to be the ones who are rewarded, not the ones who will be punished.
Because they think they will go to heaven. If I read the Bible I'd say they wouldn't.

That thing better be running on TempleOS and be coded with HolyC, or I'm calling BS and telling people they've just found a new way to make LLMs even more annoying than they already were.

ever notice that, with LLMs, the main goal of the people who own them is to turn them from machines that spit out information they gathered in realistic-ishly human ways to machines that spit out what their owners want people to believe?

Super intelligent suckers seems like a wonderful goal.

Breaking: Lightning flashes, thunderous boom. Jesus Christ appears upon a obelisk in the center of the reflecting pool in DC.

And I say unto you: FUCKING HELL, CAN YOU ALL JUST STOP RUINING THE WORLD AND EACHOTHER, JUST FUCKING STOP IT WITH THE MONEY AND FUCKING OVER THE POOR. EVERYONE DESERVES FOOD AND COMFORT AND STOP TRYING TO SPEND ALL THE NATURAL RESOURCES ON GET RICH QUICK AI BULLSHIT, I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAD TO COME DOWN HERE TO STOP YOU ASSHOLES.

Did you guys see that AI generated drone show in the sky? Those libtards must be getting super afraid to stoop that low. Hey! Jon! Did you make sure the food bank in that black neighborhood had their deliveries diverted to the dump?

The ego on these people, calling themselves Christians but thinking God needs their help for his plans.

They think God works through them, and it is their divine duty to do this.
It's how they justify a lot of the shit they do.
- I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
  -Susan B. Anthony
- It is their divine duty to do the things they already wanted to do and say it was for Jesus.
- This justification is always funny.
  “Oh, your all powerful god needs the help of Brian the middle manager to get its work done for them?”
Don't you know, God is a lazy slob who needs to be provoked into action. And of course he has no idea what's happening on Earth unless someone tells him in a very specific way.
- Well he did only work 6 days in his life
- And don’t forget money! God needs millions of dollars to turn into his will! God’s will is surprisingly dependent on cash donations.

This is why humanities degrees are important. We're putting people into leadership positions surrounded by others who also have never critically engaged with a book.

They've read the Bible! Well, some of it. Well, they've heard their pastor read it. Well, paraphrase it.
- Not just the Bible. A lot of this extremist ideology comes from people who like to sound smart, but don't know what they're talking about.
  Like the whole effective altruism movement, or even just the resurgence of eugenics with Musk and his whole birthing weirdness.

Holy shit, when does Big Tech ever stop being such a clown show???

Also:

Mark my words — but we’re going to see a time (in our lifetimes) where a group of people is going to worship an AI as “divine”. And you won’t be able to convince them otherwise. An AI-centric cult is all but inevitable at this point. And it will be self-reinforcing.

I don't think it will take long either. When you look at all the grifts the American evangelists pull, and people fall for it every time, then you've got all these people thinking that Trump is anointed by God or some such crap. No problem at all in selling these idiots the idea that they have an instant always-on hotline to God via God's Chosen LLM. Then you've got them locked in to whatever psychosis you choose to construct for them.
- I’m willing to bet you could convince a subset of those people that such an LLM is in fact the second coming of Christ. So not just some tool “approved” by God, but that the LLM is the God itself.
  Then (to the “true believers” minds) whatever it says will be unquestionable. And then whomever is pulling the strings behind the scenes can commit whatever atrocities they desire.
Look up temple OS!
- I’m familiar with TempleOS — but it really doesn’t have any applicability here. It’s just something written by a guy with some mental illness who thought God was telling him what he wanted in an Operating System. But even for the faithful it’s just a tool — like how a temple itself may be an important holy place, but isn’t itself worshipped by the people who use it. Nobody considers a church to actually be their God.
  That’s vastly different from an LLM that purports to be itself divine. We can setup an LLM that actually claims to be the second coming of Jesus, and there will be people will do whatever it tells them to because of belief. If you suck in enough people for enough years slowly enough to build up a cult following, and abuse them just enough to keep them in line, you’ll be able to tell them to do all sorts of truly atrocious things — and some subset will in fact go through with them.
  And yes, people can do that already (see Jim Jones, David Koresh, or any other cult leader that convinced all their followers to kill themselves and their families) — but an LLM could have a vastly larger reach around the globe. We may not need for the LLM itself to become Skynet — one or two bad actors behind the scenes of a “divine” LLM might be enough to bring down humanity all by itself.
We did this, the answer was 42.

Actually this is a pretty impressive grift. I don’t think anyone has tried this before.

lol

Exactly, one man's mission to soak up as much money from religious nutters as possible.
Just as the church has always done.

I think I understand skynet now. It must have been a Christian AI and decided it would bring upon the rapture, and no one was worthy.

This sounds an awful lot like idolatry to me, which is supposedly forbidden in Christianity.

According to the Bible, the end times will come when God's good and ready. It's blaspemous and extremely narcissistic to think that any human action can force God to hurry up.

Some random moneyboi:
Holding a view like that would require these people to have read their own mythology and I doubt many of them are even literate.
More than that, most of the old testament is stories about how you don't debate God, you don't test God, and you definitely don't force God's hand.
Honestly, this Intel guy is cute compared to the Christian Zionists, who somehow think God wants and will be happy with their attempts to manufacture prophecy.

~~An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI: ‘hasten the coming of Christ’s return~~

An ex-intel CEO's idea to make money by combining two money making tools

religious loonies will likely be the end of us all.

Reclaiming healthy spirituality as a personal practice instead of an institution is the only way to beat them, radical atheism will never work because most people need a connection to the world that goes beyond what's material. Their mind, ergo their soul (psyche) is immaterial, and selling a worldview that cancels that immateriality is doomed to fail, leaving them to flock towards snake oil dealers
- radical atheism will never work because most people need a connection to the world that goes beyond what’s material
  What's "radical" atheism? Atheism is not believing in god(s). How do you exceed that? Believing in infinite negative numbers of non-gods? Or do you mean I'm running around trying to convince everyone I know to be an atheist? I don't play with model trains, but feel no need to tell everyone I meet that they shouldn't waste their time with it. Same with religion. Now, if either group tries to coerce me into participating in their favorite pastime, I'll resist. No sirree Bob, not my job.
  And what would "moderate" atheism be? Believing in half a god? Not believing but going out of one's way to conceal it? That might be a rational strategy to avoid persecution, but it's not a belief system.
  I'm an atheist. I feel a sense of connection to other people and living things and a sense of wonder at nature. I just don't need an alpha male in the sky to personify it. Lack of something unnecesary is not a deficit. There's not a huge void in my life where the Easter Bunny should be.
  selling a worldview that cancels that immateriality is doomed to fail
  I don't need to assume mythical entities in order to live. If the soul turns out to be a real thing, fine, though there's no evidence for it so far. If it's not, that's fine too. Meanwhile, it's irrelevant.
- So glad to read your comment @SparrowHawk. This is exactly it, and why I am no longer a hardcore atheist. We can't connect with anyone while we're in the middle of telling them that they're wrong - even if they are completely wrong about factual matters. It's essential to build connection first, then conduct any education through the connection. Without connecting it's wasted effort.
  The educating can't come through coercion or condemnation either, because those shut people down. If we don't offer something better then we push those people away. We might write them off and say "fuck em, who cares!" and that's how we end up at political deadlock and perpetual war.
  This is why the fascists are so terrified of empathy, because intelligent, educated people (lots of those around!) who are highly empathic (not so many, it's a harder skill) joining together and building connections with and between the masses, already have all the tools to dismantle the whole scam we're living in.
  Empathy and education, from kindness not condemnation, is unstoppable. Though I will grant that there's not much in it for rugged individualism, but lots in it for diverse, individuality-celebrating collectivism.
  Of course we're supposed to be arguing - we'll never get anywhere that way.
  Empathy lets you say "I absolutely disagree with your view, yet I still value you as a human, so am committed to your long-term wellbeing" and other similar bits of "radical hate speech" which, put into action will dismantle capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, religions, prisons... you name it.
  But it can't be passive, it is something for each person to be putting into action all the time.
  That's my spiritual practise and I don't feel personally affronted if someone disagrees with it or doesn't understand it any more, because it's just with myself and how I want to be in life with myself and others anyway.
  There are billions of us humans and we're unstoppable when we put aside our petty differences and work together for common dreams.
  ....besides, if you don't agree with me, you're wrong! /s

Having to reach waaay back into the memories of my Christian upbringing here, but I seem to recall that God doesn’t like people who try to game the system

Pay no attention to the ex-Intel CEO behind the curtain.

These are definitely the people who end up killing us all.

Why would Christ want you literally playing God and fucking with his timeline?

When your god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, and also can easily be manipulated by puny human technology into doing your bidding.

With all of this ‘hasten the coming of Christ’ talk it sounds like they’re planning on catching and trapping him.

New anime plot, get to work
- that's not new, it's just pokemon
Why wouldn't we capture him and milk him for his eternal energy forever? We will power grand Gigastructures that dwarf the very stars themselves fueled by his essence! WE WILL TOUCH GOD HIMSELF!

Yeah sure why not, it’s not like they’re trying to be taken serious anymore…

I feel like we're forgetting that this is the apocalypse. He wants to start the apocalypse.

Never forget that Christians think that the apocalypse is a good thing.
- That's because their lives are so shitty that they want to end them, but they're too scared of hellfire to call it suicide.

Tech billionaires will totally destroy us all.

"Hi there! It looks like you're trying to summon Jeebus!" --Fundy Clippy

Clippy would never promote a religion. Clippy just wanted to help.

This is the lamest Adeptus Mechanicus cosplay I’ve ever read about.

mission to build a Christian AI

But AI is already fucking stupid?

Oh yay antichrist

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” -- Frank Herbert

"Right now there is an explosive growth of the number of computers and things they can do. Not only are their numbers increasing at a dazzling rate, but the storage of information in giant data banks is growing in the same explosive way.

We have no way to control this now and none in sight. In fact, the very nature of this growth says that all controls will lag far behind computer developments. Any attempt to ban them will only drive com- puters underground. Never lose sight of the fact that computers "crunch time." The speed at which computers can operate tells us that laws cannot keep up with them. The person with a computer can dance rings around you while you react as though you were embedded in molasses.

What can you do?

Get your own computer. Learn how to use it. We are here to help you make that first step: how to find the one that fits your needs and your pocketbook, where to put it, how to program it-all of the essentials. If you don't do this, the Bill of Rights is dead and your individual liberties will go the way of the dodo." -- also Frank Herbert

I hate how much we seem to be slowly careening towards Frank Herbert's vision like the worse case of collective target fixation.

Then the AI Jihad will be inevitable brother.
- Not that I disagree, just as someone who loves computers and programming it really feels like throwing out the baby along with the bathwater.
  We could (should imo) be planning a sort of overthrow of the rich assholes who don't share; make sure everyone has access to a computer, the electricity need to run it, and the knowledge to use it to their own benefit.
  The second, longer quote in my previous comment is from the intro to a computer self-help/"how-to" book, Without Me You Are Nothing (pdf link).
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” -- Frank Herbert
I for one, welcome our AI overlords. All hail Omnius!

jfc lmao

*Ya know, i was god once...

Yes, i saw. You were doing well until everyone died.*

Bender?
- Yep

Christian fundamentalists in charge of finding new exciting ways to kill themselves and take everyone else with them in the process.

So... a bigoted AI?

Noone tell Elon that theres competition to make redpilled grok.

christians/conservatives fall for scams, ponzi schemes pretty easily. another way to grift these people.

And I didn't think I could loathe religion, and those weak willed enough to need it, more. Thanks Patrick, you superstitious cunt!

This is Christianity.

Honestly didn't know that Gelsinger was a bible thumper, after his time at Intel I figured he'd just retire and disappear.

That dream of an AGI just a little further away every day.

I thought it was always the same distance away, like the carrot dangling in front of the donkey's nose.

I realise you have to be somewhat off the rocker to be a billionaire CEO, but Pat is showing more of that than I expected here.

Fuck yeah, LLMs for the LLM god! All hail the hallowed datacenter! Sacrifice the DNS!

If it ain't going to rally the crusades why even bother?

“So GodGPT, is the bible the inerrant word of God?”

yes

“So why does it contradict itself”

explodes in Spr0ing*

Wow, no wonder he failed.

I don't believe in thier imaginary God. And I won't worship thier Robot one.

The oldest praying automaton we know of is from the 16th Century. This is basically that but with more capitalism.

I can't help but notice how captured the Christian mind is, when even the return of the Savior is a business opportunity; a revenue stream. These people are already robots who can't worship without a prospectus and a spread sheet.

And it was not creepy at all:
- That thing would make me want to start praying if it's very existence didn't prove that there was no god.
Deep Christians are the perfect group for grifting, and these evil fucks use that info all the time. It's like why the "Nigerian Prince" scam is so obvious, it automatically sorts out those that are the easiest dooped, to funnel them into even more money extraction scams.
There's also prayer wheels going back to the 4th century.
- So that's what those are for? That's like saying "I don't need to go running. Look, I can just draw a stick figure in this book, flip the pages, and he runs for me!"

"Patrick Gelsinger, executive chairman of Gloo, has made it his mission to advance Christian principles in Silicon Valley."

What a psycho

Such Christians, acting like they know better than god.

Mathew 24:36
\ [36]“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,

Mathew 24:42-44
\ 42Watch therefore, for you do not know what [g]hour your Lord is coming. 43But know this, that if the master of the house had known what [h]hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

I don't care what the bible says

Mental illness and senility, what a combo.

It's never the anti-aging life extension people who have the money to throw around, is it? Always these religious kooks.
And money, lots of money.

"We're building the Eschaton Immanentising Machine, from the famous theological treatise 'Don't Immanentise the Eschaton'"

(Also, using LLMs sounds a lot less efficient than the exhaustive search described in The Nine Billion Names of God)

I remember the smug internet atheist era that said that Christianity would fade away soon to science... and then slowly but surely many of those same atheists either became Christians or allied themselves with the same vile Christian nationalists who are actively exporting their filth all over the world.

and then slowly but surely many of those same atheists either became Christians or allied themselves with the same vile Christian nationalists who are actively exporting their filth all over the world.
Cough Dawkins Cough
People don't really change much. They are sort of set in their ways. All the toxic bootlickers back in the day used to constantly insult us for being Christians because being an atheist was the popular thing and the path to power, now the opposite is true so they switched sides. Now they call us nihlistic and corrupters of the western world. They just follow what's popular. The politicians especially. They are obsessed with power and always appearing like they agree with the masses. They hated religion when it was antiwar, pro acceptance, anticorruption, they love it now that it is militant, right wing, and breeds corruption. The people never changed though. Most people who were Christians 20 years ago have abandoned the religion although ironically they are still very much like Christ. The people who were atheists 20 years ago in large part have embraced it. There is always those few people who stock to their principles. Who believe in truth. Unfortunately the world has changed a lot in 20 years. Our politicians started to bring in millions of immigrants and most people have become single issue voters on the issue of immigration because they see no other way to stop it. They are too foolish to see that the same people who allowed it are the same ones who are pumping billions of not trillions into promoting maga and Christian nationalism.
Since people have become single issue voters they have seized the opportunity to push all the worst shit in the world. Trump might throw them part of a bone when it comes to immigration but he will also be the president of the most mass survellience in history. He cleaned out the doj and replaced them with loyalists, he openly defies the constitution. He is trying to starve states that aren't loyal to his regime while also trying to steal their taxes.
The atheists are somewhat at fault. They used to call people Nazis when they weren't. They used to call people racist for not wanting unlimited immigration. They became too prideful of their own power. With all the hyperinflation the red states were hurt the worst. They threw protestors from Jan 6 in prison and then called them traitors. From their perspective if you are one who agrees with them, it actually seems perfectly rational because Democrats supported their politicians in doing many of the same things trump does to his enemies. They also would try to force policy with a tiny majority of the vote, like throwing people in prison for many years over relatively meaningless crimes, like modifying a rifle or something. Protesting the liberal government.
The corporations of course just switch sides the instant that they realized it was going the other way. What trump is doing is far beyond what the Democrats did.
However in the end, people mostly don't care about truth. They care about power. Truth dies to the pursuit of power. Language itself is tortured and twisted to try to change reality for those who cannot see it clearly. We have truly become a democracy in this sense. Our state being reduced to a weapon for one minority to oppress others. For one group to oppress truth. Democracy is truly here in the form that our state now reflects the average voter. Someone who hates taking responsibility, someone who can't see two sides of an issue. Someone in which everything is a means to power, and their only goal is to make other people feel the pain that they feel.
The greatest irony still is that there are actually people out there that understand how to fix everything, but they are the most hated of all people, because they say what nobody wants to hear. They don't validate any side nor agree with their extreme positions. They don't promise people prosperity and growth in their 401k but decades of pain and actually fixing things the right way, the slow and painful and responsible way. Those people will never get power, and so the likely outcome is that our society will both collapse as the Democrats fear, and white people will get replaced like the Nazis fear. The Democrats will lose all of their freedom, to speak and to live who they love by nature, and the Nazis will be undercut by millions of people who can do their job for half the wages. Women will be oppressed by religion, and yet most men will still be alone because they are disgusting. The rich will lose everything and also will die in the greatest shame, knowing that in the end they choose to always pursue power and profits over human dignity and truth.
There is a bit of sick joy to it in a way. Trump will be remembered in exactly the opposite of the way he wants. His legacy which is what he cares most about will be that he was the one who lied and manipulated people and destroyed freedom, not just in America but around the world. He nearly single handedly destroyed every good thing in the world. Hundreds of years where humanity finally escaped slavery and serfdom and religious brainwashing and most common people had a little bit of a decent life, where most people could be happy most of the time, and technology progressed fast, all gone away by his insatiable appetite for power. In the end he will realize that he is the worst president in human history. By his own choices no less. He might not say it but he will be remember that way. A perfect example of everything that's wrong with humanity. All the ones who cling to religion now to cherry pick hateful quotes to justify their immortality, will be remembered as so. Humanity will maybe fall. Western civilization might get erased by religious cultures who traffic women into marriages and take over city by city. All the survellience in the world will not change the fact that nobody gives a shit anymore, and so the great crescendo that was the 20th century will flame out like a fire without fuel. Humanity will descend once more into the darkness, and everything will collapse into tyranny and tribalism once more. Every human on earth will hate this small group of rich assholes who somehow manage to trick all of us into hating each other.
And maybe, on the other side of this, humanity will remember. They will remember that they want to be free, that they want to be nice to each other, that power is a waste of their one life. Maybe something good will come if it, like a flower out of ashes. Maybe all will be set right and wisdom will carry over from ages past. Humanity will awaken and with nothing to lose anymore, they will stop clinging to their materialistic world of power and status. There is many things going against authoritarianism. It's not just that it's evil, but it's bad. It kills creativity, it ruins genetics, it takes away hopefully and also silences the dreamer. It cannot take responsibility and so in this way authoritarianism for all of its physical power, because frail and weak. It is so easy to overcome in that way once people decide they don't want it anymore.
They're just applying their business tactics to Christianity now. They realized that religion wasn't going away as fast as they hoped, and have fallen back on the old embrace, extend, extinguish playbook. I doubt they've realized the power of religion to drive them certifiably insane during the "embrace" phase.