The only R-rated movie my Dad ever took me to in the theatre as a kid was Terminator 2. To this day it remains one of my favorite movies, except for the misuse of Our Lord’s name, which is thankfully infrequent in the movie. It is still one of my favorite movies because there is something Biblical about its apocalyptic import. We watch the unbelieved prophet (and his mother) warning humanity about the self-destruction towards which they are cruising. The kid John Connor asks, “We’re not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.” The Terminator replies, “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
Of course, theologically, it’s not in our nature to destroy ourselves. From the beginning, God made us for life and multiplication. Even after the Fall, we Catholics are not Calvinists who believe in total-depravity. But Original Sin has turned us against God as a species. That much is true. And so in that sense, it’s not totally inaccurate what the cyborg with the Austrian accent asserts: “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
As much as I still enjoy watching the movie Terminator 2 every year, I have never feared computers or machines could ever gain consciousness. Tech-geeks call it “sentience.” But that’s just a word to encapsulate but intellect-and-will. Of course, from the Bible and St. Thomas, we know that neither machines nor computers nor robots can ever gain consciousness because only God Almighty is capable of infusing an intellect and will. Of all the creatures in the world, only humans and angels were granted this. That’s defined Catholic dogma—De Fide—not my opinion. Thus, I’m not worried about “sentience” destroying man like we see in the Terminator movies.
However, here is where AI gets very scary. Although there have been dozens of antichrists over the last 2000 years (St. John is already recognizing the plurality of such infiltrators in the first century in 1 Jn 2:18) we know that the final-antichrist will deceive nearly the entire world.
So, what does the final antichrist (AC) have to do with Artificial Intelligence (AI)? AI is simply going to grease the skids for the AC to slide in because of how gullible people are going to be on all matters of theology, history, psychology, sociology, news and information. AI is going to have people in such a tizzy that they will believe anything and everything they see online. The AC will either play off of this or rescue them from how they have spun themselves into a digital trance of false-information.
What do I mean by a “digital trance of false-information”?
This summer, Hulk Hogan died. God rest his soul. I don’t doubt he died. However, the pictures circulating as to his alleged-funeral were obviously AI. (You can especially see in the top-picture of “the Hulk” that his eyes open in the casket!) So, it is clearly fake. But now look closer at the scarier information in the social-media post: The combined-images had 9,900 shares and 184,000 likes. Even some of my “Catholic friends on Facebook” shared that post. That means that 184,000 people did not recognize the above funeral-parlor pictures as fake. Or worse—they knew it was fake and didn’t care. They shared it anyway, pretending it was real. (And yes, if you saw the comments, you would see most people were serious about their condolences, not making fun of the obvious deceit.)
Another example: A friend on X shared the above post. I really enjoy most of his edifying posts. I don’t know him in real life, but he seems like an outstanding husband and father. He even admits he’s moving from being a modernist to traditionalist. So, I don’t mean to pick on the guy new to the trad world, which is why I left his name off the above post.
Now, consider the fact Leo has already promoted climate-alarmism, the downgrading of Christ’s miracles to natural-events and the promotion of Nostra Ætate (a document which implies Jews and Muslims are saved without faith or baptism.) Also, non-traditional outlets like the Pillar are now reporting how “a priest who was jailed in Vatican City for possession and distribution of child pornography has returned to work in the Holy See’s diplomatic service.” Whether he promoted him or oversaw the decision, this was obviously on Leo’s watch.
Here’s where his X-post comes in: Do you think an extremely effeminate cleric who promotes Muslims and child-molesters is going to call a waring Crusade against people doing both of those things? Of course not. Even an atheist or a Jew knows with 100.0% surety that is not going to happen. And yet, homeboy’s post had 431,000 views. It also had 7,700 likes, mostly from Catholics.
If Catholics today can’t discern a real funeral picture from an AI funeral-parlor and if Catholics today can’t recognize the difference between a Catholic in a mozzetta and a non-Catholic in a mozzetta, do you think they’re going to be able to recognize the deceit of the final AC? Of course not. Catholics are going to be the first to lose their informational bearings, and AI is going to be the penultimate defeat of their intellects right before the AC becomes the ultimate defeat of their intellects.
As the Terminator might sadly say to all modernists today, “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”