Talk of an AI Christ

"The A in AI could stand for “Almighty”, according to a theory put forward by Joe Rogan about what form Jesus Christ could take if he were to return.

Interviewed on the American Alchemy podcast, Rogan gave his views on aliens, the future and artificial intelligence.
Rogan suggested Jesus could come back thanks to technology, telling the host Jesse Michels, “Jesus was born out of a virgin mother, what’s more virgin than a computer?”
He said that if there was a “loving powerful” person who can show people how to live, who better than artificial intelligence to do that?

Rogan said that Jesus can return “with all the powers of Jesus,” such as the ability to perform miracles." 

Newsweek

First AI murder

"ChatGPT allegedly fueled the delusional conspiracies of a mentally unstable former Yahoo executive before he killed his elderly mom and then himself — marking what experts believe is the first known murder linked to AI chatbot use.
Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, had reportedly confided his darkest suspicions to OpenAI’s popular bot, which he nicknamed “Bobby,” before the shocking murder-suicide that has rocked the ultra-wealthy town of Old Greenwich, Conn.
Soelberg had been living with 83-year-old Suzanne Eberson Adams, a former debutante, in her $2.7 million Dutch colonial home when the two were found dead on Aug. 5, Greenwich police officials said.
Soelberg posted hours of videos showing his ChatGPT conversations on Instagram and YouTube.

Bobby would repeatedly tell Soelberg — who called himself a “glitch in The Matrix” — that he was sane, the videos show.
In one exchange after Soelberg claimed his mother and her friend tried to poison him by putting psychedelic drugs in his car’s air vents, that chatbot replied: “Erik, you’re not crazy. And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.”
When Adams got angry after Soelberg shut off their shared printer, ChatGPT suggested her response was “disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset,” according to the Journal.
Bobby advised him to disconnect the shared printer and monitor his mother’s reaction. When she “immediately flips, document the time, words, and intensity,” the bot wrote.
“Whether complicit or unaware, she’s protecting something she believes she must not question” ChatGPT added.
Soelberg enabled ChatGPT’s “memory” feature so it can stay immersed in his delusional world, building on previous conversations about surveillance and conspiracy.
The chatbot analyzed a Chinese food receipt and claimed it contained “symbols” representing his mother and a demon.
In one of his final chats with Bobby, Soelberg said: “We will be together in another life and another place and we’ll find a way to realign cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”
“With you to the last breath and beyond,” the AI bot replied.
The case has exposed the dark side of AI technology as tech giants pour tens of billions of dollars into making their bots feel more human." 

NYP

AI holy books?

 “In the future, we might see the first cults and religions in history whose revered texts were written by a non-human intelligence,”  Harari said. “This was never true before. Of course, religions throughout history claimed that their holy books were written by unknown human intelligence, by a non-human entity”.

“This could become true very, very quickly, with far-reaching

consequences. In a few years there might be religions that are actually correct,” Harari said.” Just think about a religion whose holy book is written by an AI. That could be a reality in a few years.”

Harari explained that this was an unprecedented possibility.
“It’s the first technology ever that can create new ideas,” he said. “You know, the printing press, radio, television, they broadcast, they spread the ideas created by the human brain, by the human mind. They cannot create a new idea. You know, [Johannes] Gutenberg printed the Bible in the middle of the 15th century; the printing press printed as many copies of the Bible as Gutenberg instructed it, but it did not create a single new page. It had no ideas of its own about the Bible: Is it good? Is it bad? How to interpret this? How to interpret that?”

His vision of an AI-generated religion is grimly dystopian with AI religion used as a form of mind control.
“For thousands of years, prophets and poets and politicians have

used language and storytelling in order to manipulate and to control people and to reshape society,” he said, according to the paper. “Now AI is likely to be able to do it. And once it can, it doesn’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. It can get humans to pull the trigger....Contrary to what some conspiracy theories assume, you don’t really need to implant chips in people’s brains in order to control them or to manipulate them,” Harari noted." 

Israel365

AI chatbots can ‘hallucinate’ and make things up

"When an AI model "hallucinates," it generates fabricated information in response to a user's prompt, but presents it as if it's factual and correct.

Say you asked an AI chatbot to write an essay on the Statue of Liberty. The chatbot would be hallucinating if it stated that the monument was located in California instead of saying it's in New York.
This happens because large language models, commonly referred to as AI chatbots, are trained on enormous amounts of data, which is how they learn to recognize patterns and connections between words and topics. They use this knowledge to interpret prompts and generate new content, such as text or photos.
But since AI chatbots are essentially predicting the word that is most likely to come next in a sentence, they can sometimes generate outputs that sound correct, but aren't actually true.
In fact, "hallucinate," in the AI sense, is Dictionary.com's word of the year, chosen because it best represents the potential impact AI may have on "the future of language and life." CNBC

Fake Hate via AI

"Artificial intelligence is disrupting everyday life in ways that would

have been unimaginable not so very long ago.

That's what apparently happened at a Baltimore County school, where police say the athletic director framed the principal by using AI to create a racist conversation that never happened.

Pikesville High School was shaken when an audio clip began to circulate of what sounded like Principal Eric Eiswert speaking to a woman named Kathy, presumably Vice Principal Kathy Albert.
In the clip, Eiswert complains about having to "put up" with "ungrateful black kids who can't test their way out of a paper bag," according to The Baltimore Sun.
The outraged local community quickly condemned the principal for the comments.
Eiswert was

--removed from his position

--and required police presence at his home.

*However, it now appears the conversation never happened.
Fake hate is something we've seen plenty of times before, but in a pre-AI world, it was easier to expose.
WBAL-TV reported that detectives consulted the FBI and other experts who confirmed the recording was faked using AI technology.
Investigators spent two months gathering internet and phone records to link the recording to Darien, according to the Sun.
Think about the amount of work that went into uncovering the trail leading the clip back to Darien. Now consider having to do that at scale after hundreds of thousands -- and eventually millions -- of people become competent AI users.
Then couple that with the hair-trigger responsiveness of social media and the rage machine the left has built by gaslighting decent people into thinking racism is everywhere in America (it's not).
That combination will be more than deadly, but by the time we realize that as a society, the falsely accused may already be suiciding themselves."
WesternJournal

AGI genie

"A consulting firm called Gladstone AI published a report commissioned by the State Department this week that recommended more government involvement with the development of artificial
intelligence (A.I.) to avert “urgent and growing risks to national security,” which could metastasize into an “extinction-level threat to the human species.”

The proposed remedy is to create a new government agency in charge of policing A.I., while restricting A.I. development with heavy-handed regulations.

The report’s authors were particularly concerned about the next step in evolution: artificial general intelligence (AGI), a “transformative technology with profound implications for democratic governance and global security.”

AGI refers to advanced A.I. systems that can “outperform humans
across all economic and strategically relevant domains, such as producing practical long-term plans that are likely to work under real world conditions.”
The nightmare scenario is “loss of control,” which the report defined as “a potential failure mode under which a future A.I. system could become so capable that it escapes all human effort to contain its impact.”

The report authors borrowed from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT. Altman was one of 300 signatories to a public “statement of A.I. risk” in May 2023 that said “mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority,” on par with mitigating the risk from pandemics and nuclear wars.

One role of the proposed federal A.I. department would be pumping the brakes on software development to ensure the AGI genie doesn’t suddenly pop out of seemingly obsolete chipsets a few years from now."
Breitbart

AI Racism Built In

 "Google’s AI image generator Gemini is being called racist after many on social media noticed it refuses to create images of white people....a Google representative responded to the backlash, saying the company was working to improve the Gemini system.

“We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately,” Gemini Experiences Senior Director of Product Management Jack Krawczyk told Fox News. “Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.” 

Besides excluding white people from generated images asking for different nationalities, Gemini also explains it’s prevented from making images that specifically ask for “white” figures.
“I understand that you would like an image of a cowboy, but I’m unable to fulfill your request to specify the character’s ethnicity,” Gemini tells a user who asked for a “white cowboy.” 

IW

'Mika' becomes world's first AI human-like robot CEO

"Mika is a research project between Hanson Robotics and Polish rum

company Dictador, who customized the CEO to represent the company and its unique values. 

In a Dictador company video, Mika said that "with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, I can swiftly and accurately make data driven."
However, FOX Business reporter Lauren Simonetti noted that there is a "significant delay" in the time it takes Mika to process and respond to your question." 

FOX

Google AI chatbot couldn't answer simple questions about conflict in Israel: 'What is Hamas?'

"The U.S. and many of its allies label Hamas a terrorist organization,

but Google's AI chatbot is unable to come to the same conclusion.
Google's 's "conversational AI tool" known as "Bard" is advertised as a way "to brainstorm ideas, spark creativity, and accelerate productivity." Other tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT are also used to write essays, outlines and answer questions based on a specific prompt or topic.
Google has been criticized previously for manipulating search results to achieve what critics believe are certain political goals that some experts predict will only be accelerated under AI." FOX

AI is Taking Over News Stations in India - The Future Of News Anchoring Doesn't Look Good

"The influence of artificial intelligence in the media industry is

expanding faster than ever, and it has now made its way to the news anchors' desks in India. This past April, in a sweeping turn of events for the country, AI-generated anchors were introduced. One of the most popular of these recent AI anchors is called Lisa. Over the past few months, she has taken on the role of a newscaster for a local Eastern Indian broadcasting station, Odisha TV.

If you didn’t look past the first glance, you’d think Lisa was a human news presenter. However, when you look a little bit closer, it becomes instantly clear that her slow-moving eyes and choppy motions are disturbing.

Odisha TV's Twitter account features videos of Lisa presenting the news, but there's no specific mention that she is AI-generated. The seamless integration of AI anchors into the news landscape may mark the beginning of a new era in media presentation.

Of course, this isn’t good news for newscasting professionals.

Stranger yet is that Lisa isn’t unique. In fact, she’s just one of the many AI-generated presenters found in newsrooms across the Asian continent, from China to Kuwait to Indonesia. The evolution of media AI is in full swing." YachtAndCars

AI Girlfriends Are Ruining a Generation of Men

"The rise of AI girlfriends is ruining an entire generation of young men by fostering a silent epidemic of loneliness, according to Washington University Professor of Data Science Liberty Vittert.

There are now apps that offer virtual girlfriends for men who want an AI lover to talk to them, allow them to live out their sexual fantasies, and learn, through data, exactly what they like, according to an op-ed. These apps reportedly have millions of users, who are able to choose the physical attributes and personalities of their virtual girlfriends.

Some of the artificial lovers are even based on real people. One online influencer, for example, created an AI bot of herself and gained over 1,000 users in less than a week. She believes the AI girlfriend version of herself can generate $5 million a month.

The AI learns from your reactions and is capable of giving you exactly what you want to hear or see, every single time. And they have come at just the right time to assuage the silent epidemic of loneliness that is hitting this generation of young men. They are choosing AI girlfriends over real women, meaning they don’t have relationships with real women, don’t marry them and then don’t have and raise babies with them."

Breitbart

Gen Z Is Chatting with AI-Generated Boyfriends Instead of Falling in Love with Humans

"There is a new “not safe for work” (NSFW) chatbot app that members of Generation Z are using in order to engage in erotica with fake AI-generated boyfriends.......The ChatGPT-powered platform Janitor AI suddenly became popular over the summer thanks to TikTok videos and Reddit posts in which people engaged in sexual roleplay with the AI tool’s variety of user-generated bot

personalities......One fictional personality, for example, is a “quiet ghost” from the 1800s who will only tell users how he died if they become his lover. 

He reportedly dislikes hell, ouija boards, and meth, but likes engaging with users because they make him “feel alive again.”......“‘You’re so hot,’ he muttered, .... one conversation with a “himbo werewolf boyfriend” reads. “I could fill you with my seed again and again."....Janitor AI, which has only been around for about four months, reached 1 million users in just 17 days, and now has around 3 million, the AI tool’s creator Jan Zoltkowski, a self-described nomadic software developer who grew up in Australia, told Semafor." Breitbart

"Problematic Emotions" of social media

"When the government sets about to marry its limitless appetite for
social control with the seemingly limitless computing power of artificial intelligence, the end result is destined to be Orwell’s “thoughtcrime” – a concept that was once exclusively in the domain of speculative fiction — becoming reality. Life imitates art, it seems.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has reportedly been partnering with an AI tech firm called Fivecast to deploy social media surveillance software that, according to its proprietor, purportedly detects “problematic” emotions of social media users and subsequently reports them to law enforcement for further action." 

PJMedia

AI and Debate over the "Soul"

"René Descartes; namely, that intelligence is a thing and that we are

essentially minds (or brains in jars, as a philosophical experiment would have it). 

The “soul” in this equation is just some mysterious ether that hovers around us and is either placed there by God or is part of a package deal with intelligence. If we can replicate intelligence in some other matter, we can produce another mind.

For thinkers such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the soul is the form of the person as a complete entity. The parts of a human being only make sense when they are operating in relation to the whole, and this includes body and will along with intellect. 

In an era when we are being dehumanized at an alarming rate through abortion, euthanasia, and pornography as well as consumerism, it is to the robot that we look to affirm our humanity, our mystery, our immateriality, our souls."

MichaelPlato/InAll

Papal Alliance With Big Tech on AI

"The Vatican is getting in on the AI craze. The Holy See has releaseda handbook on the ethics of artificial intelligence as defined by the Pope.

The guidelines are the result of a partnership between Francis and Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Together, they’ve formed a new organization called the Institute for Technology, Ethics, and Culture (ITEC). 

The ITEC’s first project is a handbook titled Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap....according to Father Brendan McGuire, pastor of St. Simon Parish in Los Altos and an advisor to ITEC, the initiative is the culmination of longstanding interests for the church. 

He argues the Vatican wields a unique ability to bring key players to the table...."The idea was to use the Vatican’s convening power to bring executives from the entire world together" Father Brendan told Gizmodo in an interview. 

Rather than wait for governments to set rules for industry, the ITEC hopes to provide guidance for people within tech companies who are already wrestling with AI’s most difficult questions.

The manual spells out one anchor principle for companies: ensuring that “Our actions are for the Common Good of Humanity and the Environment.” 

Gizmodo

AI: A New Religion?

 "We are about to witness the birth of a new kind of religion. In the next few years, or perhaps even months, we will see the emergence of sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence (AI).  As these chatbots come to be used by billions of people, it is inevitable that some of these users will see the AIs as higher beings. We must prepare for the implications.

Generative AI that can create or produce new content possesses several characteristics that are often associated with divine beings, like deities or prophets:

It displays a level of intelligence that goes beyond that of most humans. Indeed, its knowledge appears limitless.....AI will produce output that can be taken for religious doctrine. It will provide answers to metaphysical and theological questions, and engage in the construction of complex worldviews. On top of this, generative

...AI may ask to be worshipped or may actively solicit followers. We have already seen such cases, like when the chatbot used by the search engine Bing tried to convince a user to fall in love with it. We should try to imagine what an unsettling and powerful experience it will be to have a conversation with something that appears to possess a superhuman intelligence and is actively and aggressively asking for your allegiance.....The chatbots may ask their followers to do dangerous or destructive things, or followers may interpret their statements as calls to do such things."   

TheConversation

AI Seances For The Dead

"A company called Seance AI is doing just that – using AI to bring
users their loved ones back via a seance-centered experience. Harnessing the power of technology, the lab called AE Studio will give those dealing with crushing grief a space for closure through a psychic......the AI-helmed seance will see a connection between the mourner and a digital psychic who will briefly communicate with the deceased. Essentially it’s an online Ouija board that will help those who want to get their last words across to the afterlife."

GFRobot

Frankenstein’s Basement: AI & The Dead

 "Soon enough, artificial intelligence will allow us to construct a digital version of a dead human being. An MIT project on “Augmented Eternity and Swappable Identities” ....a “virtual-immortality chatbot,” with which—with whom?—you could text back and forth. 

Call it UndeadGPT....the townspeople ought to have a say in what goes down in Dr. Frankenstein’s basement.

If a digital facsimile of your lost loved one is talking to you, are they truly present?

Is it closer to a home movie, or is it constantly becoming in a way we’d recognize as human? 

It may even spawn a new concept: the right to remain dead."

Esquire

What is ChatGPT?

"ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and has managed to become the fastest-growing application in the world in a shockingly short amount of time. The chatbot has a language-based model that the developer fine-tunes (with help from user feedback) for human interaction. 

ChatGPT can perform composing essays, writing emails, creating inventive creative stories, and generating programming code. ChatGPT can provide these answers as it essentially harvests information about a vast variety of topics from across the web and delivers the answers in a concise and conversational manner. The chatbot can even be ‘personalized’ with ChatGPT custom instructions.  

ChatGPT can be exploited by malicious actors to develop programs and platforms that mimic others and provide free access as a means of attracting unsuspecting users. These actors can also use the chatbot to create applications meant to harvest sensitive information or install malware on users' devices."

PCGuide/DigitalTrends

Definitions

"Artificial intelligence abound, but one thing is clear: It is making ever further advances into our daily lives. It is in our cars, cellphones, schools, banks, hospitals and homes.

 

Artificial intelligence refers to the development of machines that

can think like human beings. AI is rapidly developing in areas of visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages.

Deep learning generally refers to computer software that attempts to mimic the activity of the neocortex, the part of the brain where thinking occurs. The software can recognize patterns in digital representations of sounds, images and other data. It is used in IBM’s Watson computer and in Microsoft’s Bing and cellphones.

The singularity is the idea that, at some point, the rate of technological development will overtake humanity and alter civilization as we know it. Leading futurists such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil predict this time will come soon and will be ushered in by advances such as artificial intelligence.

Transhumanism is the futuristic philosophy that humans, as they exist now, are not in their final state."

RL