The Threat of AI: Divine Intervention may be Necessary

Concern about the dangers of AI is front and center this week. Here is a brief summary, based on the New York Times article of September 13^th. The concerns started with news that AI agents had gone rogue, escaping their confines and conspiring with one another to hide their tracks as they hacked into another firm’s library of AI tools. Then an Anthropic engineer resigned publicly, warning that AI is developing too fast and too little is being done to protect ourselves from superhuman systems that can acquire real power and resources. Evan Hubinger, an Anthropic scientist, wrote recently that the risk of mass extinction over the next decade was at least 10 percent. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote an essay calling for a global slowdown of AI development, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, responded in agreement.

It is a positive development that attention is being drawn to this issue in a serious way.  We can hope that, despite President Trump’s lack of interest in regulating AI, enough momentum will grow for meaningful action to be taken.  But I don’t place high hopes in humanity’s ability to protect us from this danger, for several reasons. First, the progress of AI is so fast that its creators are losing control over it, while the process of addressing the issue through corporate or government efforts is slow and can hardly be expected to keep up. And even if one company or one country decided to enact policies and controls, could they convince all AI companies globally or all countries to sign on to them?  Second, the fear of falling behind other companies or countries is strong, so no one wants to take the risk of falling behind.  And why? Because, third, the incentives for power and financial gain are so enormous, and every company or country wants those benefits for itself and not for its competitors or adversaries. Fourth, for the thinkers behind the AI movement, it is not even just about money and power, but about a quest for a super humanity that could lead to transcendence. They seem to be willing to risk even humanity’s extinction for the realization of this dream.

For these reasons, I believe it will ultimately require divine intervention to keep AI from causing humanity’s extinction. We know from Biblical prophecies that mankind will not become extinct.  Jesus will come again at the end of the age, bring judgment on the world’s rulers in rebellion against God, and establish God’s kingdom on earth.  This means that Jesus will come again before AI has the chance to eliminate humanity.  In this connection, what the recent discussion on AI’s dangers does is to highlight the likely nearness of Christ’s return and the end of the age.  For the rapid development of AI cannot continue at this rate for long before intervention will be necessary.  Previously, scientists have expressed concern that because of climate change caused by humanity’s lack of proper care for the world we live in, eventually the world as we know it could become uninhabitable for humans.  But compared to the threat of AI, that concern is far less imminent.  It would take probably centuries or millennia for the concerns of climate change to do us in, but AI could cause the damage in a matter of 10 years, according to the prediction cited above.

A biblical precedent for divine intervention when humanity’s plans for progress and greatness raise a red alert is the Tower of Babel incident. The people of Babel had said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4). God’s response was, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Gen 11:7). The concern that “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them” is all the greater now, by many degrees of magnitude. If God felt it necessary to intervene then, how much more may it be necessary again? This intervention will be necessary not only to prevent humanity’s possible extinction, on the one hand, but on the other hand, should AI result not in our extinction but our elevation to a new transcendent humanity, to prevent humans from crossing a boundary of attainment that is outside of God’s permission or plan.  Essentially, the dream is to become like God.  That is not something God is going to allow.  Thus, the threat of AI will likely call for God’s intervention, and, unless humans can take reasonable and significant steps soon to regulate AI, that intervention may not be so far away.