Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence has been around since rudimentary computers were invented during World War II to help break secret military codes. The cyber revolution has led to smartphones being thousands of times more powerful than the computers used to put a man on the moon, and AI continues to significantly advance.
Artificial intelligence has been around since rudimentary computers were invented during World War II to help break secret military codes. The cyber revolution has led to smartphones being thousands of times more powerful than the computers used to put a man on the moon, and AI continues to significantly advance.
In 1969, the IBM 360 computers used by NASA could hold approximately six megabytes of information. Today’s average smartphones have at least 16 gigabytes, or more than 2,500 times more storage than those NASA IBM computers. A decade ago the Economist magazine noted, “The McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank, says AI is contributing to a transformation of society ‘happening ten times faster and 300 times the scale, or roughly 1,000 times the impact’ of the Industrial Revolution” (June 25, 2016, p. 3 of Special Report Section). Computers can now not only perform analysis faster than ever on data sets of unprecedented size, but they can weigh the value of the data and “learn” as they accumulate more successful results, simulating how neural pathways are strengthened in the brain during learning.
In 2014, tech billionaire Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla electric cars and of SpaceX, warned the rise of artificial intelligence was “potentially more dangerous than nukes [nuclear weapons]” (p. 13). He later added: ”Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.” (quoted by Matt McFarland, “Elon Musk: ‘With Artificial Intelligence We Are Summoning the Demon,’” The Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2014). Stephen Hawking, the famous astrophysicist, also expressed his concern, stating, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race” (Rory Cellan-Jones, “Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind,” BBC News, Dec. 2, 2014).
We can interface on the computer with AI virtual assistants such as IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google now, but there are serious privacy issues with the amount of information about people these services are collecting. There is also a growing trend to replace human soldiers with robotic forces in the military. Modern conflicts are increasingly like laboratories for refining and demonstrating future military technology.
The Ukraine war with Russia has allowed NATO countries to test their advanced weaponry in a real battle, increasing further knowledge. Forbes.com, in an article on April 22, 2025, titled, “How Ukraine Is Replacing Human Soldiers with A Robot Army,” reported, “Ukraine has scaled up drone production at pace, going from a few thousand in 2022 to 200,000 in 2024 to 2 million last year". James Barrat, an expert in the AI field, notes: “Fifty-six countries have or are developing battlefield robots. The race is on to make them autonomous and intelligent…” (Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, 2016, p. 21). Revelation 9 describes the angel blowing the 5th trumpet, and what are called “locusts” ascending from the great abyss. Verses 7-12 seems to describe some kind of flying drone or craft.
Clearly, there is a worldwide race among top technological nations to build this first cyber Tower of Babel, unleashing a danger it probably could not control. God’s timely intervention put a temporary stop to the advancing technology that threatened mankind's welfare when ancient humanity united with the goal of developing more knowledge and technology: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4). God’s response was: “...now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7).
Revelation 13:16-17 describes a future time of totalitarian state control, in a modern Babylon, regarding who is able to conduct commerce, which would seem to require significant monitoring of every person, but just as with the ancient Tower of Babel, God said He would intervene in the end time and not allow the human race to eventually extinguish itself. As Christ promised, “Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved [alive]; but for the elect’s sake [that is, the sake of His followers] those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).
As Jesus Christ reminded us to pray daily: “Come and set up your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey you, as you are obeyed in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, Contemporary English Version). This will be the ultimate solution to man’s dangerous delving into AI and other technological pursuits that can end in catastrophe.
- Source:
Beyond Today magazine (May-Jun, 2017),
- https://www.ucg.org/learn/beyond-today-magazine/beyond-today-magazine-may-june-2017/artificial-intelligence-coming-threat
