I had the occasion to hear an interview between Joe Rogan, the unorthodox podcast host, and Elon Musk, the equally unconventional scientific and technology entrepreneur; perhaps most famous for his futuristic car, the Tesla.
But on this particular day, Musk was willing to talk about an advanced and menacing technology that had my spirit screaming warnings. But, this wasn't the first time I had been alarmed by Elon Musk. Back in 2015, I wrote a blog post in which I mentioned that "Musk and his tech giant buddies have pledged $1 billion to save humanity from destruction by artificial intelligence." At the time, Musk seemed to feel it important enough to sound the alarm and hoped "to keep big companies like Google or Facebook — both of which have huge
artificial intelligence operations — from getting too much power from "super-intelligence systems"."
Apparently, he got over that fear in the next couple of years, because just last year he announced a start-up company called Neuralink, that is ready to "begin outfitting
human brains with faster input and output by next year". Well, that time is nearly here! Neuralink is
working on technology that’s based around “threads,” which it says
can be implanted in human brains with much less potential impact to the
surrounding brain tissue versus what’s currently used for today’s
brain-computer interfaces. “Most people don’t realize it, but we can solve that
with a chip,” he said at the time.
Well, just this week, on Rogan's podcast, Musk announced that his company would be ready to implant a neural link in less than a year, with "low potential for rejection". And he said there's nothing to worry about ... such primitive devices exist now, such as devices that offer deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease, for example. He said it looks like this: you take out a chunk of skull, insert the electrode threads into the brain. "You wouldn't know anyone had it, and it can interface with any part of the brain that has anything wrong with it". My first thought was, "Who decides what is wrong with a brain, and what qualifies as wrong?" Will my beliefs in religious freedom, the right to life, or that there is a God one day be considered wrong and need deep brain stimulation to change my way of thinking?
If you think I'm over-reaching, please think again. In 2013, Ray Kurzweil, former director of engineering at Google [and scary futurist], was quoted as saying this: "We can now see inside a living brain and see individual inter-neural
connections being formed and firing in real time. We can see your brain
create your thoughts and thoughts create your brain. A lot of this
research reveals how the mechanism of the neocortex works, which is
where we do our thinking. This provides biologically inspired methods
that we can emulate in our computers. We’re already doing that. The deep
learning technique that I developed uses multilayered neural nets that
are inspired by how the brain works. Using these biologically inspired
models, plus all of the research that’s been done over the decades in
artificial intelligence, combined with exponentially expanding hardware,
we will achieve human levels within two decades... We're going to become increasingly
non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates and
the biological part is not important any more. In fact the
non-biological part [the machine part] will be so powerful it can
completely model and understand the biological part. So even if that
biological part went away it wouldn't make any difference."
Are you sufficiently alarmed now? And if that's not enough, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan just this week, "Full AI symbiosis is possible". In case you don't know the definition of symbiosis, it is this: interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both. Rogan's response? "Once we've experienced being a god, who is going to want to go back to being stupid [read that as "human"]?" Musk seemed to be in agreement, stating, "AI's getting better -- it's a benign scenario now [read as "not harmful". We're already a cyborg to some degree. We interact with our phones and electronic devices, put the data rate is too slow. Right now, we download information at about 100 bits/second (approximately 12.5 bytes). Computers can go 1 million times faster. If you can improve the data rate, you can improve symbiosis between man and machine". (And obviously, that is the goal of his invention).
As if that wasn't enough to send my spirit into orbit, he went on to say, "There will be a better version of the way we interface with reality; we can aspire to be less wrong. Hopefully, we'll gain more than we lose. We can achieve mind viral immunity, a concept that infects people's minds and eliminates wrong-headed ideas". By this time, I'm yelling at the screen, But who decides what's wrong thinking?
But it was this statement by which he showed his intention with his company Neuralink: "Super sentient [able to perceive and feel], Artificial Intelligence is inevitable. It is a requirement for survival for us to be symbiotic [with computers]". He then claimed that we are already in a state of symbiosis -- we have a connection with our computers, but that connection is weak. Computers have terabytes of information we use. Why wouldn't we want to connect with them? "If you can't beat them, join them" was his mantra.
What I wrote in my previous posts is just as true today ... These intelligent scientists and inventors deny the plausibility of our spirit
and connection to a living God. So while vehemently denying the
existence of God, they are, in effect, trying to play God. Just like Nimrod and the folks at the Tower of Babel, our
modern-day technological geniuses want to become famous by displacing
the need for God. Motivated by pride and arrogance, they have made a
name for themselves. But perhaps they should revisit that section of
the Bible and learn of the destruction that was the result of such
conceit. God will not allow His Sovereignty to be usurped; and not only
did they not achieve the greatness they sought, but they suffered His
Divine Judgment.
It's not hard to see that the Age of Computers is a tool in the hands of the one who would
separate us from our Creator. But only if we let him! In the midst of all the other craziness going on in the world, it is essential that mankind understand that the Enemy's goal is to usurp man's
natural state and produce a machine that we were never meant to be. We
would no longer be made in the image of God, but in the likeness of a
machine-driven computer. It is incumbent upon each one of us to decide how far down that road we are willing to go. And we will all have to answer Elon Musk's question ... "Do you want to go along for The Ride"?
Isaiah 47:10 You were secure in your wickedness; you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge led you astray. You said to yourself, ‘I exist, and there is no one else.’
Syntax Error could be placed anywhere we have our own thoughts, our own beliefs, our own actions, our own faith, our own dreams, our own ability. All it takes is a command to shift what we have been created for, to be recreated in a functional tech world, but not a world that God created us in or to be. Very insightful.
ReplyDeleteYes! That's what my spirit is telling me, too! And the masses will sign up for it!
ReplyDelete