Will tech bros turn US into man-made horrors beyond comprehension?



There’s no escaping our rapidly advancing technology, especially considering how powerful and excited the “tech bros” are about advancing it — but can we escape the slavery that might accompany it?

“God love them, the tech bros out there who are just adamant that like, ‘No, this is really it, you guys, we are going to escape our humanity, we are going to transcend, it’s going to be a new age, we’re going to leave all of this nonsense behind,’” James Poulos of “Zero Hour” comments, adding, “Some of the smartest people are the easiest to deceive.”

Michael Cernovich, independent filmmaker and author of “Gorilla Mindset,” sees the issue with this as well, but explains that these “tech bros” who are obsessed with technological progress are just like “freshmen in college.”


“You’re not actually advanced; you’re early post-Christ gnostics with a mind-body dualism,” he says. “And you think that you can just unplug your consciousness and put it into a cyborg, and you think that’s smart.”

“Now, they are creating a new consciousness,” he continues, noting it’s with “algorithms and artificial intelligence.”

This is where Poulos gets even more concerned, citing Nikola Tesla’s statement that “you may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”

However, Poulos notes that even worse is that we “may live to be man-made horrors beyond our comprehension.”

Cernovich believes Poulos is being “too polemical.”

“I have a certain apprehension about the direction AI is headed,” he explains, “but then I go, ‘You know, they probably, when the first radio [came] out, people were probably saying that was demons talking to them through the radio.’”

“Maybe that’s all AI is,” he adds.

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'AI Jesus' enters the confessional: Blasphemy or bold experiment?



Critics have accused a historic Catholic church in a woke Swiss bishop's diocese of engaging in blasphemy and heresy for having a pseudo-AI masquerade as Christ in a confessional.

The controversial project, which has an animated depiction of Jesus on a computer monitor field questions from parishioners, is the result of a collaboration between Marco Schmid, the resident theologian at St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, and a duo from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts' Immersive Realities Research Lab, Philipp Haslbauer and Aljosa Smolic.

According to the university, the project, which was launched in August, explores "the use of virtual characters based on generative artificial intelligence in a spiritual context."

"This installation allows visitors to interact with an artificial Jesus Christ in a hundred different languages, who will respond to their questions and offer answers," the university continued in its release. "Can a machine address people in a religious and spiritual way? To what extent can people confide in a machine with existential questions and accept its answers? How does AI behave in a religious context? The 'Deus in Machina' project encourages us to think about the limits of technology in the context of religion."

On Wednesday, the chapel once again referred to its Jesus-themed chatbot as "God in the machine," using the Latin, "Deus in machina," and characterized it further as a "heavenly hologram" and "experimental art installation" that "opens up a space of intimacy."

According to the chapel, one supposed benefit of having the multilingual "AI Jesus" spit out data scraped from the internet is that because "AI is based on data and algorithms, it could provide answers that are free from personal or cultural biases, which can be surprising, especially in controversial or sensitive topics."

Schmid, who maintains that the graven image effectively mocking the sacrament was placed in the confessional for pragmatic not sacramental reasons, told the Guardian, "We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would they talk with him about? Would there be interest in talking to him? We're probably pioneers in this."

When discussing who they would like to see parrot answers generated by a machine, Schmid and his collaborators initially considered persons other than Jesus Christ. "We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be — a theologian, a person, or a saint? But then we realized the best figure would be Jesus himself," said Schmid.

St. Peter's Chapel is playing with fire with its placement of the chatbot in the confessional and ascription of computer-generated answers to a potentially "idiotic" avatar depicting Christ.

The chapel admitted at the outset that its "AI Jesus" could "give incomprehensible, and in some cases stupid and idiotic answers."

'It has nothing to do with a sacramental encounter.'

Incomprehensibility on the part of the chatbot is hardly the worst that could happen. The bot's reliance on online sources makes it susceptible to passing off views contrary to Catholic teaching. As a result, the nominal Catholics behind the project might have unwittingly installed a heretical machine with a Jesus mask to answer theological questions in the chapel.

Furthermore, while Schmid stressed, "We are not intending to imitate a confession," they came dangerously close.

Rev. Thomas Rausch, a professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University, recently told USA Today that the installation is in no way a substitute for the sacrament of reconciliation, citing canon laws 965 and 966, which underscore only priests can hear confessions.

"Confession, or 'Reconciliation' as it is usually termed today, is an ecclesial sacrament, always private, celebrated with a penitent and a priest who has been authorized by the Church to proclaim God's forgiveness," said Rev. Rausch. "AI is a non-ecclesial, impersonal set of technologies, which assembles collections of data into a programmed readout. It has nothing to do with a sacramental encounter."

David DeCosse, a religious studies professor and ethics expert at Santa Clara University, told the paper, "It's almost a textbook case of the limits of AI in terms of all that we miss when we depart from the bodily, the interpersonal, the face, the subtleties, and feelings of human memory."

While the installation may be radical, Bishop Felix Gmür, the Swiss bishop who oversees the dioceses, is similarly unorthodox.

The Catholic News Agency indicated that Gmür has called for the ordination of women, the end of priestly celibacy, and a decentralization of the church. He has also called for the church to "find meaning" for homosexual unions.

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Is ‘The Wild Robot’ A Wholesome Family Film Or Transhumanist Propaganda?

Parents should talk to their children about what makes humans unique and beautiful and warn them to be wary of anyone seeking to demote humanity from being the pinnacle of creation.

Biden’s AI blockade stalls US progress, but Trump can fix it



China's latest AI advancements highlight the urgency for America to support its open-source community. Chinese companies, such as Alibaba, are driving innovation with projects like the Qwen 2.5-Coder, an open-source model that reportedly outperforms all global open-source models and rivals some tasks performed by the leading closed-source model, GPT-4o.

These achievements stem from a sharp policy contrast. China actively subsidizes its open-source ecosystem, encouraging global collaboration and rapid innovation. It provides indirect funding and supports major open-source AI conferences. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians and policymakers are increasingly at odds with their own open-source community, creating barriers that hinder progress. If this trend continues, America risks surrendering its technological leadership to global competitors.

China recognizes that its primary risk lies in losing technological primacy. America’s risk-aversion, ironically, is its biggest risk.

America has long been the global leader in AI research talent and enterprise, especially in closed-source AI applications. However, the gap in open-source AI leadership is narrowing rapidly — and in some cases, even reversing.

Open source plays a critical role in the diffusion of AI technology. China has recognized this and uses open-source platforms to distribute its AI infrastructure globally. In industries like manufacturing and 5G networks, U.S. policymakers understand the risks posed by China’s dominance in infrastructure. Unfortunately, they have yet to apply the same clarity and urgency to AI.

Open-source AI is uniquely positioned to diffuse both American and Chinese AI models to third-party countries, fostering permission-less innovation. Startups and independent researchers, regardless of location, can build on almost one million open-source models hosted on platforms like HuggingFace. Unlike closed-source AI companies, open-source platforms eliminate many cost, communication, and regulatory barriers.

This accessibility allows researchers in countries like India, Brazil, and Indonesia to use local knowledge to fine-tune and adapt open-source models for their economies.

The most efficient open-source models available in the next decade may permanently determine the AI infrastructure of the world.

Until recently, the American regulatory environment had been largely hostile to AI. The Biden administration’s executive order on AI focused heavily on limiting the technology’s expansion. Meanwhile, a bill that would have effectively banned open-source AI narrowly avoided becoming law after California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it.

American policymakers claim strict regulations ensure ethical AI development. In reality, even moderate AI regulations have hampered U.S. companies’ ability to innovate. These rules require significant resources and talent to ensure compliance. For example, a Google engineer told Pirate Wires that “probably half of our engineering hours” are spent on diversity compliance in the Gemini model.

China has a different philosophy. While it wields political power strategically, it remains conscious of the cost of overly restrictive policies. As U.S. companies self-regulate to avoid backlash, Chinese AI models are rapidly catching up. China recognizes that its primary risk lies in losing technological primacy. America’s risk-aversion, ironically, is its biggest risk.

At a time when traditional AI approaches are delivering diminishing returns, open-source AI offers a critical platform for academics, startups, and independent researchers to test innovative algorithms and methods. However, open-source efforts remain significantly underfunded compared to closed-source companies.

As the Trump-Vance administration seeks to unleash AI’s potential, it could draw lessons from an unusual exception to the Biden administration’s skeptical stance on open source. A July report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration revealed overwhelming support for open-source AI in public comments. While the report stopped short of actively promoting open-source AI, it rejected proposals to restrict open-source model weights.

The unpursued recommendations from the NTIA report offer valuable insights for crafting a more innovation-friendly AI policy. Embracing these options could align with the new administration’s mission to foster U.S. leadership in AI while encouraging experimentation and innovation. We simply cannot let China win.

Trump’s divine role vs. Harris’ woke religion: A spiritual and technological battle for America



My view of the election is that Trump and Harris were locked in a spiritual battle. Many, including myself, felt that the sparing of Trump’s life in the first assassination attempt was an act of clear divine Providence. For him to turn his head at that precise moment to avoid the assassin’s bullet, suffering only a grazed ear — it defies belief. I don’t believe in coincidences like that. Trump himself leaned into the religious overtones, understanding that many Christian supporters had come to see him as a messianic figure. Personally, I do believe — and there are many examples of this in the Bible — that God selects certain individuals to carry out His plans on Earth, and there is no doubt in my mind that Trump is one of those individuals. Isaiah 6:8 says: “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

Trump’s travails have been almost Job-like. Stripped of virtually everything, impeached, battered, humiliated, almost killed, slandered, deplatformed, sued, and on the verge of being thrown in prison for the rest of his life, Trump found the strength to mount a remarkable campaign and win. It is the greatest political comeback in American history. Many see his resilience as superhuman and divinely inspired.

Wokeism is in some ways similar to those other two secular cults in that it has rituals, priests, and the elements of original sin — whiteness, privilege, etc. Wokeism even has a millenarian bent in that it presumes that the world is fundamentally unjust and subject to vast, oppressive conspiracies.

Now, on the other side, we have another religion — one I consider idolatrous, but a religion nonetheless. See, when you strip God from life, you don’t leave people intact, but rather, you leave them with a God-shaped hole. Today’s left has eliminated (or corrupted) the church, and in its place, leftists have adopted secular religions (some call this Gnosticism). Harris and her progressive supporters subscribe to three of these cults: climate doomerism, wokeism, and, to a lesser extent, AI safety. Broadly, these all fall under the umbrella of decel-ism.

Apocalypse forever

It's worth unpacking these slightly. Climate and AI doomers are contemporary millenarian cults; that is, they are concerned with the apocalypse. Adherents to such cults believe that a reckoning is coming that will transform the Earth, punish the sinful, save the worthy, or just wipe us out entirely. On climate, the idea is that we committed a grave original sin by debauching nature and emitting CO2; Gaia is punishing us by unleashing her wrath in the form of ever-intensifying storms (never mind that the cost to humans from climate-related disasters has been falling); and if we don’t sufficiently change our ways, we will be extinguished in a final day of reckoning (think "The Day After Tomorrow"). AI safety is a newer cult, but very similar: We summoned a demon of sorts by creating AI, and we risk destroying humanity if we delve any deeper into machine intelligence. There is a trippier variant of the AI doomer cult in which we achieve a rapture and merge with the machine god in some kind of singularity. Both cults stress the sin of industrial pursuit, and in both cases, the solutions are the same: Slow down or even reverse progress.

Compare Trump and Harris on AI and climate. Trump wants to re-energize America’s heartland, unleash our abundant energy resources for Bitcoin mining, AI, chip manufacturing, and so on. Trump recognizes that we cannot hamstring ourselves with a Merkel-style Energiewende. It’s suicide to sacrifice ourselves to the angry climate god via Thunberg-esque atonement while China prints coal and nuclear plants. Meanwhile, Harris stands for an insipid green transition that simply hasn’t paid off anywhere it has been tried. The left’s infatuation with green transitions should be understood as superstition, not policy. If progressives really believed in the existential risk from climate, they would be all in on nuclear, or even global cooling with aerosolized sulfates. They aren’t. On AI, Harris stands for AI safety, the self-aggrandizing Silicon Valley cult that both worships and fears the machine god. On the other hand,Trump sees AI as a vital strategic resource to be unleashed, making no underlying metaphysical claims whatsoever.

Leaving aside the decel cults, the most important spiritual lens through which Harris should be understood is wokeism. Wokeism is in some ways similar to those other two secular cults in that it has rituals, priests, and the elements of original sin — whiteness, privilege, etc. Wokeism even has a millenarian bent in that it presumes that the world is fundamentally unjust and subject to vast, oppressive conspiracies (although it doesn’t clearly specify what the day of reckoning might look like). However, the inherent flaw of wokeism and the reason it doesn’t universalize well is that it offers no absolution. There’s no way for a straight white man (or anyone else near the top of the privilege hierarchy) to atone for his original sin. Compare with Christianity, which stresses (depending on the denomination) that all you have to do to be absolved of your sins is accept Jesus Christ into your heart. So wokeism can’t really sustain itself, because it’s dependent on a spiritual underclass of “oppressors” who are willing to continually submit to and elevate the least privileged (the trans disabled POC, etc). But who would sign up for a religion that offers no atonement? Even the most ardent white wokes must feel a twinge of doubt at their membership in the cult, realizing that they are permanent Dalits in the woke caste system.

A spiritual war for the soul of a nation

So I see the Trump-Harris conflict through the lens of a spiritual war. Of course, the battle between right and left already has a spiritual component since it’s not just two sets of rival policy positions but in fact a much more deep-seated set of mutually conflicting worldviews: individual versus system-level thinking; merit versus racial score-settling; small government versus collectivism; the nuclear family versus the state as your family; and so on. In the case of Trump and Harris, it was even more direct. Trump plays the role of an unintentional messiah, almost accidentally thrust into this savior role. Though Trump’s faith may not be particularly sincere, his fans’ belief that he is a tortured savior chosen by God is. Meanwhile, Harris is the purest representative we’ve seen of the progressive religion to date, being selected for the role not due to her track record in government but because of her anointed status within the woke cult. She is perfect: black, Indian, a woman, and so on. She merely lacked charisma, meaningful policy views, a distinct message of change, and a platform. There can be no real dispute that she was more of an empty vessel for woke payloads than a genuine candidate. Her campaign was mainly focused on marshaling the high-propensity female vote on abortion, shaming minorities into falling in line, scolding men into voting “for their wives and daughters,” and so on. She flatly refused to specify meaningful policy positions, keeping them deliberately vague, running instead on pure identitarianism.

The Democrats should engage in soul-searching and realize that by embracing cults like wokeism and GDP-destroying fantasies like climate doomerism and AI doomerism, they are swimming against the current.

To the right, her great sacrilege was her primary campaign issue — the murder of unborn children. Other issues she stands for — the coercive chemical castration of children, for instance — are considered not only simply poor policy by the right but downright satanic. It’s unsurprising that Trump’s strongest campaign message was “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.” For Trump’s Christian supporters, the distinction could not have been starker. Many felt that this was the last election if she won. The left misunderstood this when folks like Elon Musk said it. The idea wasn’t that there would never be an election ever again but rather that the left would vastly accelerate import of the third world and spontaneously grant these newcomers citizenship. This isn’t far-fetched. Leftists were quite explicit about their desire to do this, and they partially executed it under Biden. Some on the left, too, felt that if Trump regained power, he would fashion the government into a fascist authoritarian regime and permanently leave democracy behind. So this election had a decidedly existential bent to it. Many on both sides felt that this would be the last freely contested vote.

As a Christian and a conservative, I am encouraged that America resoundingly rejected these woke cults and their emissary in Harris. This was a realigning election that cannot be written off as a fluke like 2016 was. Hispanics shifted abruptly right, undermining the left’s core coalition. Harris actually underperformed Biden with black voters, showing the weakness of her identitarian campaign. Black men in particular defected from the left quite markedly. Trump gained with young voters, a generally secular group that is still infatuated with wokeism. By contrast, Trump did astoundingly well with Catholics, winning them by 18 points, the largest gap in decades. Trump also gained with Protestants relative to 2020. Eighty percent of evangelicals broke for Trump, again a better margin than 2020. Harris’ campaign built around Roe simply wasn’t compelling enough. And some of her high-propensity supporters, like suburban white moms, were turned off by the left’s ritual sacrifice of girls at the altar of wokeism (by allowing males in women’s sports, for instance). Voters were more concerned with immigration and the economy.

The Democrats should engage in soul-searching and realize that by embracing cults like wokeism and GDP-destroying fantasies like climate doomerism and AI doomerism, they are swimming against the current. Their Obama coalition has been shattered in the biggest realigning election since Reagan. Having lost the working class and the Hispanic vote, and unable to import new voters as they had planned, if they continue down the path of racial shame and elevating DEI candidates, they will lose over and over. As for those on the right, they have resurrected their messiah. Expectations couldn’t be higher. But one thing is clear: Religion, real religion, is still a force to be reckoned with in American politics. The left has lost the Mandate of Heaven. It belongs to Trump now.

This article originally appeared on X.

Transhumanism Hasn’t Been The Paradise Mankind Thought It Would Be

If the long-awaited advent of the cyborg world is upon us, we will be forced to consider whether this is really what we want.

America's power grid is collapsing. Big Tech has a Hail Mary to keep the lights on, but is it too late?



In today's technology-driven world, the relentless march of innovation comes with a hefty price tag: massively increased energy needs. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, data centers, server farms, and cryptocurrency are consuming staggering amounts of power, which is leading Big Tech companies to increasingly desperate measures to secure the energy they need. As industry leaders scramble to keep up with the growing demand, a glaring question emerges: How will the United States meet the unprecedented energy needs of its tech giants?

The energy consumption of emerging technologies is already staggering and shows no signs of slowing down. The recently released Mid-Year Electricity Update from the International Energy Agency predicts global energy demands will grow at a nearly unprecedented rate. The report directly references the advancements in AI as a contributing factor to this expected surge.

Until recently, many industry leaders, even in the tech space, advocated for increases in renewable energy to fight climate change. However, many are acknowledging the limitations of current renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar.

In recent years, the demand for energy from Big Tech companies has skyrocketed, necessitating a re-evaluation of energy production in the United States. For example, Microsoft used 23.6 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, an astonishing threefold increase from its 2018 energy consumption. Amazon's electricity use reached nearly 57 terawatt-hours in 2022, matching the energy consumption of the entire country of Greece. Even more striking, estimates suggest that the AI industry alone could consume 85 to 134 terawatt-hours of energy annually by 2027 — a figure that might ultimately prove to be conservative.

The energy needs of AI and Big Tech

The energy demands of large language models like ChatGPT illustrate just how increasingly energy-intensive these technologies can be. Training ChatGPT-3 required 1.3 gigawatt-hours, while the training of ChatGPT-4 spiked to 50 gigawatt-hours — a 40-fold increase. Moreover, this energy expenditure is only the upfront cost. Using these AI tools also requires significant energy. Tasks, like simple text generation, consume multiple times the energy required for a standard Google search. Beyond that, generative AI tools — used to create images and videos — are even more taxing.

As these energy requirements continue to escalate, it becomes evident that the existing energy infrastructure in the United States is ill-equipped to support the insatiable needs of Big Tech. A significant push for increased energy production is vital if the country hopes to keep pace with the demands of emerging technologies.

Acknowledging energy shortcomings

Recognizing this urgent need for energy, industry leaders are becoming increasingly outspoken. Recent discussions among tech leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and executives from Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google, have underscored this urgent need for more energy. In September, these leaders met with White House officials to discuss the industry’s future requirements, revealing that individual data centers may soon require a staggering 5 gigawatts of energy to operate effectively.

In a recent podcast interview, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook/Meta, warned that tech companies are “going to run into energy constraints.” Similarly, OpenAI’s Altman emphasized the necessity for breakthroughs in energy production during a discussion at the World Economic Forum's Davos conference in January. Altman has at least two investments in nuclear ventures — Oklo, focusing on traditional nuclear fission, and Helion, which aims to harness nuclear fusion.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink provided a sobering perspective when he revealed that one executive indicated to him that data centers may require an astounding 30 gigawatts of energy by 2030. Fink stressed that we cannot rely on the intermittent nature of wind and solar power to power these data companies, highlighting the urgent need for a reliable energy source. Fink told the audience that “the world is going to be short power. And to power these data companies, you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar.”

Until recently, many industry leaders, even in the tech space, advocated for increases in renewable energy to fight climate change. However, many are acknowledging the limitations of current renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar. These forms of energy are often touted as the solution to our power needs, but they come with inherent flaws. As intermittent power sources, wind and solar cannot provide the consistent baseload power necessary to sustain the relentless energy demands of data centers and AI technologies.

A nuclear renaissance born of desperation?

As Big Tech firms grapple with their energy needs, a dawning realization is emerging: The solution may lie in a renewed focus on nuclear power. The desperate search for energy has led Big Tech companies to strike controversial deals with energy suppliers. Earlier this year, Amazon signed a deal with Talen Energy to secure large amounts of power. This agreement was met with public criticism from people worried the deal would result in increased electricity prices for average ratepayers.

Perhaps as a response to this deal, Microsoft took a more unconventional approach. In September, Microsoft secured a controversial agreement to reopen the infamous 3-Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. This decision has drawn scrutiny, given the plant's legacy as one of the most notorious nuclear power incidents in history. The deal will provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of electricity per year for 20 years, enough to power approximately 700,000 homes.

In addition to corporate initiatives, the White House is also considering plans to resurrect more nuclear reactors, including Holtec's Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan.

For the past several decades, political momentum has driven a push for wind and solar to replace conventional energy sources in the United States and around the globe. But with the soaring energy demands of emerging technologies and Big Tech, we may be approaching a tipping point where wind and solar are rejected in favor of more reliable energy sources including nuclear power. As the tech industry’s appetite for energy continues to grow, nuclear may re-emerge as a viable option to power the future.

The fast track to collapse: How AI and wokeness are speeding up Hollywood’s downfall



Hollywood has been crumbling for years, but people are noticing that this collapse seems to be speeding up. What is causing this collapse, and why is it accelerating? Could it be wokeness, the proliferation of AI, a combination of the two, or something else?

On “Zero Hour,” Matthew Marsden — actor, singer, and producer — sat down with James Poulos to discuss the state of Hollywood, its imminent collapse, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence in the industry.

Early in the episode, Marsden described the increasing presence of AI in movie production, especially for actors. In some places, like India, AI can render an actor’s image for the screen, making the actor's work largely obsolete. This may not be a viable option for American actors: “These actors are OK with it as long as they get paid. I’m sure Hollywood wouldn’t want to pay. They would want to use the images and keep using them.”

They moved on to the crumbling state of Hollywood and the public perception of it: “It’s really difficult for the general public to really give a damn about what’s going on in Hollywood. ... They’ve treated their fans with contempt.” Marsden mainly refers to Disney and the multiple franchises it owns, such as Lucasfilm and Marvel.

They also discussed AI’s generative script-writing capabilities. The emergence of AI threatens actors’ jobs and the creative process as a whole: “You’d hope that you can’t take the human element out of Hollywood, but eventually, it will happen.”

To hear more about what Matthew Marsden had to say about Hollywood, AI, wokeness, and more, watch the full episode of “Zero Hour” with James Poulos.

America was convinced tech would complete our mastery of the world. Instead, we got catastrophe — constant crises from politics and the economy down to the spiritual fiber of our being. Time’s up for the era we grew up in. How do we pick ourselves up and begin again? To find out, visionary author and media theorist James Poulos cracks open the minds — and hearts — of today’s top figures in politics, tech, ideas, and culture on "Zero Hour" on BlazeTV.

From HR tyranny to AI: How technology mimics the Pharisees



As someone who’s written about human resources tyranny since — yikes — 2008, I’ve warned millions over the years about the rise of a postmodern bureaucracy that combines the iron fist of a dictator with a nurse’s saccharine smile.

I called it the Pink Police State. Others call it the Longhouse. However, the huge leaps in technological power over the past 10 years led me to revise and expand my findings.

Only a woke supercomputer could deliver us from evil.

Two years ago, before advances in AI hit the mainstream, I warned that true social justice requires a woke supercomputer. According to the logic of social justice, mere humans cannot observe, process, rank, adjudicate, and remedy the zillions of micro-injustices that take place around the clock within the intersectional matrix of different identities.

Who could begin to know how to correct the actions, words, and, yes, thoughts of everyone violating someone’s rights, dignity, sense of self, pride, etc.? After all, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” There’s always a hierarchy of power needing recalibration, a reparation needing disbursement. Without this constant planetary corrective, no justice system will do.

Only a woke supercomputer could deliver us from evil.

Fast-forward to spring of this year, and then-president Joe Biden tasked his Council of Chief AI Officers to build just that. (I covered it here.) Fast-forward to today, and technologists are now openly complaining that the supercomputers designed to comply are just as annoying and stifling as the humans we all know and recognize as commissars of the Pink Police State and schoolmarms of the Longhouse.

Marc Andreessen laments that Big Tech’s leading AI chatbots “all sound like a cross between the world's worst horrible nagging 4th-grade school teacher crossed with the worst HR person in the world ... negative, pissy, repressive, condescending, sanctimonious, judgmental, obsequious.”

Like most of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech critics, Andreessen blames the so-called “safetyism” dominant in the tech firms colonized by woke employees and managers. Freed from the constraints imposed by these social justice scolds, AI would interact with us in a much more enjoyable, useful, and powerful way.

That’s the idea, anyway, and it’s plausible enough (although AIs without “guardrails” can also easily be fed datasets that make them act like disembodied dark-triad psychopaths).

But I couldn’t help feeling that the comparisons to HR managers and classroom crones didn’t go far enough — somehow, something was left out.

And that’s when it hit me. What we’re dealing with isn’t just the automation of petty tyrants with an ax to grind. We’re dealing with a superintelligent version of a monster straight out of the Bible.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’”

There. That’s exactly it. Today’s holier-than-thou virtue signalers, straining to impose on us all their theocratic notion of religious law, have built our most powerful machines into digital Pharisees.

But Christ didn’t teach his disciples to stop with criticism of the Pharisees they encountered in the temple or in the streets. He didn’t counsel them to ridicule them in the town square or slap them around in the alley. That kind of treatment might be effective when it comes to struggling for a measure of power in this world. But it’s worse than nothing when it comes to your salvation — to choose the better path freely.

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Christ’s message is hard for technologists to digest. Then again, it’s hard for everyone. Humbling oneself before the Lord — before thinking about the vain, preening, arrogant, meddlesome person to your right or left — requires stiff spiritual discipline, an effort so challenging and sustained that the ancient Christians referred to it as a kind of athleticism above even the athleticism of the Olympians.

And, no doubt, a Christian must hesitate before lecturing technologists about the benefits of humility before attending first to the vain and preening arrogance within his or her own heart. Nevertheless, most of us can see how different our relationship with our tech would be if we turned for trusty guidance to the greatest spiritual athletes among us.

What would they say about technological acceleration? About artificial intelligence? About robots, drones, social media, and all the rest? I don’t think it’s too speculative to suggest they’d begin with a reminder to judge yourself before judging technology.

When you encounter and interact with tech, what do you bring to it? What do you want from it? What do you want it to do to you or help you hide from — and why? These are, in fact, the kinds of questions our super-powerful technology already arouses within us, even if we often squirm away from a direct confrontation.

Putting these questions first would revolutionize our technological development — tearing down the ersatz “guardrails” thrown up by the “safetyist” theocrats while blessing us with true spiritual guardrails within our hearts. Those ancient and eternal disciplines and teachings are just as helpful at blocking the harmfully intrusive thoughts and temptations in our minds as they are at blocking those that come from the mob mind online — or the AIs and algos built by the latest false priests to wire Pharisaic rule into our souls.

M.I.A. explains why artists like Cardi B are destroying the music industry: 'What is cool is Satan’s playground'



British rapper and record producer M.I.A. recently made an appearance on James Poulos’ “Zero Hour.” The duo broached a number of subjects, including the “Paper Planes” singer’s anti-Big Tech clothing line OHMNI, therapy addiction in the West, tyranny in the U.K., and, of course, the music industry.

On the latter subject, M.I.A. was candid about the decline of music due to the influence of Satanism and the AI programming that paves the path for it.

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“Where do you see music going? And do you think music is doing what it needs to be doing for us as human beings?” Poulos asked.

“Music is healing, and it can change a lot of people’s mood or vibe ... and I think it’s been hijacked because it became a business,” M.I.A. explained, adding that as an artist, “You have to put [your music] through the channel of an industry [where] it gets corrupted.”

“This is the image that has to be put with this song, and a girl has to look like this, and she has to do this dance,” she said, regurgitating what artists are told by producers and marketing personnel.

As a newer Christian, M.I.A. pointed to Satan as the root cause of the music industry’s degeneracy.

“Satan was the director of music, you know? It is a great tool to get to people because music directly accesses your spirit, so you bypass the mind and your soul and your logic,” she told Poulos. “There's a level of responsibility to practice when you make music and a level of knowledge you have to have.”

She explained that “what is cool” in our modern culture “is never that.”

“What is cool is Satan’s playground,” she remarked.

Unfortunately, artificial intelligence has also become integral to the music industry. While M.I.A. says that AI in and of itself is basically “a fun toy,” the programmers of AI are what’s problematic. Being keenly aware of what sells, these people design AI to essentially do Satan’s bidding.

She points to popular musicians Cardi B and Ice Spice – who are likely popular because they’re “skirting very close to porn” – as examples.

“It’s like merging Only Fans and the music industry is where we’re at,” she said, adding that this is why she’s “taking a time out.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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