AI, Tower of Babel and the End of the World
Lately, as I’ve been thinking about the rapid rise of technology, AI, Quantum Computing, Robotics, Biological Engineering and the like, I keep going back to the Tower of Babel. I can’t help but think that all of this technological development is actually a net negative for humanity in the long term.
In Genesis 11, we find the story of the Tower of Babel. Genesis 11:1 reads in the NKJV, “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.” At first glance, one language and one speech seems redundant. According to ChatGPT, “the double phrase highlights complete human unity, not only linguistically, but socially and ideologically.” In other words, the world at that time had one language and one culture. God saw this as a threat. The people came together to build a city with a tower at its center. The tower is generally acknowledged by biblical scholars to be a ziggurat, a sort of pyramid that had steps and had no hollow spaces inside. The tower’s purpose would have been to serve as a gateway between the gods and humans.
God looks down from heaven and is concerned by their behavior and decides to intervene in a dramatic way. Verses 5 and 6 read, “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” The ESV has the end of verse 6 saying, “And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”
Today, with the help of computers, AI, and hundreds of thousands of hours of human labor, we are seeing the gradual eradication of the barriers caused by language. We aren’t quite at the point where universal translators exist but we are not far off from it either. Lately, AI Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Grok are now capable of speaking fluently in many different foreign languages. We are at the point already that everyone can have a translator in their pocket as long as they have access to the Internet.
At the same time, through the education systems of the world and through media like movies, television programming, and the power and ubiquity of streaming services, we are seeing one ideology and culture being promoted worldwide. The global nature of these services is such that every culture connected to the Internet is being influenced and reshaped according to the values of the majority.
Anyone coming from a humanist or secular worldview considers this positive progress. People like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other New Atheists long for the day that religion is banished to the dustbin of history and everyone buys into this one grand vision for humanity. These types usually consider an achievement of this sort to be the utopic outcome of progress. The Bible though, comes to a different conclusion.
This story in Genesis 11 along with the Flood story in Genesis 6 serve as a warning to us in the modern age. While our political and ideological masters do their utmost to propel humanity towards one language, one ideology, one culture, the people are blissfully unaware of the dangers facing the human race.
Reversing the Curse of Adam
In Genesis 3, as a direct consequence of Adam and Eve eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God hands down some curses to each of them. For Eve, the curse is that child-birth was going to be much more painful and that there was going to be a perpetual power struggle between women and their husbands. For Adam, the curse was that work was going to be hard. The ground wasn’t going to produce as easily or as abundantly as it did previously. In other words, life was going to be hard.
Since that day, humans have been inventing technology to make their lives easier. It is a partial undoing of this curse that life was going to be hard. We see this effort today in all kinds of ways. In agriculture, before the advent of machines and powered engines, everything was done by hand or with the help of horses. Successful agriculture required huge amounts of human labor. As a result of the invention of steam powered and then fuel powered engines, large cultivators were invented along with tractors and all kinds of implements it could use. These inventions allowed a few people to do what used to require armies of people in the past. It was a partial reversal of the curse of Adam on the ground.
Agriculture isn’t the only domain that has benefited from technology. Today, there is scarcely any domain untouched by technology of one kind or another. Each piece of technology seeks to multiply our efforts and minimize our challenges. The printing press allowed books to exist cheaply. Previous to that, every book had to be hand copied. This was a time consuming process and, as a result, only rich people could afford books. The printing press democratized books and made learning much more accessible to the common person. Learning became easier.
The industrial age saw the rise of machines of various kinds. The quantity and often the quality of materials the machines manufactured were superior to human effort alone. The industrial age saw massive changes to human society and it made fortunes for the captains of industry who set them up. Again, this technology democratized clothing and goods of all kinds. People could afford to purchase multiple sets of clothing in all kinds of varieties because the cost of making the clothing became much cheaper as a direct result of these new machines taking the place of human labor.
The rise of technology around mass communication also allowed politicians and rulers to educate, influence, and control the masses much more easily than in the ancient past. First it was books, journals, newspapers, and booklets that were created and distributed widely. The 20th century saw the invention first of radio, followed by television, then the internet and now artificial intelligence. Each of these leaps in mass communication have further amplified and solidified control of the masses and the power of those who control the media.
The Purpose Behind the Curse
God understood that if life was too easy, humans would never feel their need of God. If life had no hardships, human beings would get themselves into trouble. Without hard work, life would have no purpose. The curses are generally seen by humans as being net negatives. In reality, the curses end up being a means of salvation for them. Through hardship, humans learn to be grateful. When times are hard, good times are more beautiful. When a task is hard, accomplishing it feels more rewarding. If one could easily climb a huge mountain like Mount Everest, everyone would do it and the special sense of accomplishment would vanish. If everyone could easily earn a PhD, then those degrees would be meaningless.
For life to be meaningful there must be struggle. For people to be grateful, there must be a cost. If we live our life always trying to avoid paying any cost or suffer any sacrifice, we will find ourselves living a life without meaning and purpose. Life cannot be centered around pleasure. As nice as it is to experience pleasure, being in that state perpetually isn’t good for humanity. Inevitably, good times set the stage for hard times. Why must this be so? Because during good times, humans begin to take for granted the conditions that created the good times and over time, certainly over generations, we forget or fail to appreciate the important lessons learned in the past. Humans can’t help it. History is full of examples of this cycle in action.
Why AI is a Net Negative for Humanity
All knowledge you have today was gained through pain, suffering, and effort on your part. Any knowledge acquired without effort is knowledge that will not remain in your brain for long. We are hardwired to remember information that was costly for us to obtain. Artificial Intelligence threatens to make the acquisition of technology to be painless. Humans no longer need to retain information in their brain. All they need to do is to carry around a device like the smartphone and then they can query the AI at will and get the information they are seeking when they need it and how they need it. This is great right? Wrong. While the information can be right and helpful, unfortunately, it causes people to become less intelligent.
AI is like Pandora’s box. In Greek mythology, Zeus, the chief of the gods, gave a woman named Pandora a box but told her never to open the box. Curiosity got the best of her and one day she opened it. As a result, all the evils were released into the world like disease, sorrow, conflict, and death. When she realized she had made a mistake she quickly closed the box but it turned out to be too late. Evil could not be put back into that box.
AI promises humanity many things like progress, the eradication of disease, the extension of life, and wealth for all. Unfortunately, it will also likely lead to many negative consequences, some foreseen and others unforeseen. Terminator like robots, government surveillance and control, and worse.
AI is being touted as the birth of a god which one day promises to have intelligence far exceeding all of humanity combined. Humans are building an entity that some predict will take over as the dominant life-form on Earth. This futuristic vision flies in the face of what the Bible says about where we are going and how the end of the world will come about.
AI’s Role and the End of the World
Jesus tells us in Matthew 24 some of the conditions that will exist just before he returns and ends evil once and for all while establishing his kingdom on Earth.
And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:10-14)
We see all of this happening today. We live in a generation that is more easily offended than maybe any other one in the past. We also live in an age of a massive surplus of information and confusion with so many voices claiming to have the truth about the world, God, and salvation. Lawlessness is also rampant today and it is certainly true that people are not nearly as kind and helpful as times past. Truly, the love of many has grown cold.
AI amplifies these conditions. It is often an echo chamber that reinforces cognitive bias and prejudices. It is trained on the mass of human writing and data and therefore doesn’t provide a new perspective but instead, merely reinforces the bias found in society as a whole. At the same time, it is very good at debate and arguments and therefore very convincing when explaining things to neophytes and experienced alike. It is possible to guide the AI to different conclusions than it would normally make but this requires persistent effort, creativity, and an ability with language and persuasion in order to ask the AI for differing and possibly counter-culture explanations. I believe it is asking too much of the average person to expect them to challenge the AI in its conclusions.
AI then is helping humanity to continue in its denial of the Bible and biblical truth. The companies that control AI are more interested in attention and influence than they ever are in absolute truth. They seek control and power even at the expense of what is good, moral, and right for humanity as a whole.
How does this lead to the end of the world? AI can be an echo chamber that reinforces bias and stereotypes. It is also subject to the pull of government level ideologies and political priorities. Applying AI towards the challenge of bringing the entire world towards one world religion or ideology of life is not outside the realm of possibility. It could be tasked with doing this subtly and gently at first without the average person even being aware that it is happening until it is too late.
He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13:13-17)
Revelation lays out the end game for us. Two powers working together to control the whole world. The second beast power creates an image that speaks and identifies everyone who isn’t cooperating with the global agenda and marks them for death. This power is also preventing these same people from buying or selling which pretty much becomes a death sentence. All of this is now easy for a world power to accomplish today with the help of artificial intelligence.
Don’t worry, God wins!
I don’t want to end this article on a down note. The last two chapters of Revelation, chapters 21 and 22 make it clear that God ultimately defeats evil. AI and humanity will not prevail against God almighty. God wins, Satan loses as does evil in general. Christians should not live in fear but they must nonetheless have a healthy respect for the negative direction that technology and the ideologies of this world can lead them. We must be careful to hold on to our belief in God and be directed by his Holy Spirit.
Knowing this end game doesn’t mean that AI should be rejected entirely. It simply means that we should be wary of integrating it fully into our lives and making it the final word on all knowledge. The Bible must reign supreme for the Christian. AI may try to deceive us into rejecting parts of the Bible. We must guard against this.
Use AI for good wherever and whenever possible but be on guard against its misuse. One day, technology will be used to oppress the people of God. May God help us not to be deceived.
Joseph Duchesne is the creator of The Church AI Guy, a space where faith meets innovation while discussing the long-term impact of AI. A pastor, autodidact, and author of two books—The Last Crisis and Discover the One—he’s passionate about showing how Jesus-centered discipleship can thrive in a digital world. When he’s not experimenting with the latest tech, he’s reading theology, building church community, or spending time with his wife.
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