Will AI Become Our New Gods?

For context, Harari had been explaining how AI is different from all other previous technological breakthroughs because it’s the first technology that can make decisions—including decisions about humans—and generate ideas.1 To illustrate, Harari noted that the world-changing breakthrough of the Gutenberg printing press could generate copies of the Bible. But the printing press could not create new content to include in the Bible, nor could it interpret or evaluate the Bible.

However, Harari continued, “AI can create new ideas, can even write a new Bible. . . . Throughout history religions dreamed about having a book written by a superhuman intelligence, by a non-human entity.” He then stated (although not entirely accurately2) that every religion claims its holy book originated from “superhuman intelligence” while other religions rely on manmade texts. Harari continued, “In a few years, there might be religions that are actually correct, that—just think about a religion whose holy book is written by an AI. That could be a reality in a few years.”3

What should we make of these remarks? Let’s look closer at who Harari is and what technology he was talking about, so we can understand these comments’ significance.

Who Is Yuval Harari?

Along with being a historian, futurist, and Israeli university professor, Yuval Harari is a well-known author and contributor to the World Economic Forum. He’s written two popular books, one titled Sapiens that chronicles the (supposed) evolutionary rise of humanity and a second attempting to predict the rise of a new human species—hence the title Homo Deus, meaning “God Man.”

Noteworthily, Harari does not view this foreseen new human species as divine. He does not believe in any form of supernatural. Instead, he views homo deus as superhuman, much like the Greek gods who were not omniscient or all-powerful, but simply had powers that made them appear godlike to the people in Greek mythology. Harari believes that homo deus will be that kind of person.

While Harari self-identifies as an atheist, the group he is most commonly associated with, the World Economic Forum (WEF), openly courts faith leaders. A range of religious leaders, from Pope Francis to Rick Warren,4 has spoken at the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. And Christianity is far from the only religion present at Davos. The Forum collaborates with all faiths. Just what is the WEF?

The WEF

The WEF is an NGO noted for lobbying governments to enact progressive policies. However, they go far beyond mere lobbying. WEF founder and leader Dr. Klaus Schwab admits that the Forum “penetrate[s] the cabinets” of world governments to achieve their agenda.5 They do this through a program called the Young Global Leaders. Notable alumni of the program include the current leaders of Canada, France, and Belgium. The program also includes royals from at least two countries (including the crown prince of Norway); journalists from major news organizations like the Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News; CEOs and VPs from major companies like Citi Bank and Verizon; founders of major brands like Airbnb, Facebook, and Wikipedia; parliamentarians from Chile, Israel, Nepal, New Zealand, and Finland; and professors from universities like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and UC Berkley. Schwab has not just penetrated a handful of cabinets, but the much wider world.6

An organization with tentacles as widespread as the WEF’s should be taken very seriously. It is important to know what they are about and why they would care so much about using AI to reprogram religions. It may help to know that in 1974, Dr. Schwab insisted on hosting an openly Communist Brazilian archbishop named Dom Hélder Câmara at the Forum in Switzerland—even though Switzerland’s laws against Communism made Câmara’s appearance there illegal.7^,8

Many of the ideas espoused by the WEF itself are Marxist or neo-Marxist in nature. For example, Schwab advocates for increased governmental control of economies through public-private partnerships to push society toward desired goals.9 To do this, he calls for what he terms a Great Reset, borrowing from WEF contributor Richard Florida’s book of the same name.

Richard Florida explicitly calls for renting instead of home ownership,10 reduction in car travel,11 and reduction in energy consumption.12 His solution to achieve these goals is either a 15-minute city or a 15-minute baseline, where everything you need is within a 15-minute walking/driving distance except in exceptional circumstances.13 The only way to enforce such a system would be checkpoints or a complete change in values, eliminating freedom of movement.

Schwab echoes Richard Florida’s desire to reduce private property but goes a step further by openly calling for global governance to fix the issues.14 Harari appears to concur, writing in Homo Deus that the goal of government has morphed into providing people with happiness.15 To ensure this happiness, Harari also calls for a global government.16 To do this, Harari advocates providing chemicals that induce happiness in the brain, either by bioengineering or by turning humans into godlike cyborgs.17 This is transhumanism in a nutshell. Harari postulates a future in which the elites of society are effectively made immortal by medicine and technology while the “useless class” are cared for by the state.18

The combination of Harari’s ideas about happiness and the Marxian reduction of private property led the WEF to release a video in which the sentences “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy” featured prominently.19 Importantly, these ideas are not new but have been part of a long-running agenda openly linked to spiritual darkness. As this article documents, a prominent nineteenth-century advocate for communism named Robert Owen wrote that séance spirits he communicated with endorsed a globalist form of socialism in which people would essentially own nothing and be happy. The spirits told Owen that they would gradually persuade people to adopt this scheme, even if nobody believed Owen at first.

Now we’re apparently watching that prediction unfold in real time. The WEF’s deadline for many of their stated goals is 2030—as of this writing, less than seven years away.20

Getting to 2030

The problem the WEF and other likeminded organizations has is that the vast majority of the world’s population is religious—and religion tends to value private property and human rights, at least to some extent. The Bible is explicit that both life and property are inviolate and cannot be taken without process of law. The Ten Commandments clearly state that both murder and theft are wrong, with no exceptions. The WEF recognizes that the values people hold often come directly out of their faiths.21 Therefore, faiths must change.

Correspondingly, the WEF partners with world leaders to change the religious practices of a given faith to better suit their agenda. During the Ebola crisis in West Africa, faith leaders were coopted to change burial practices—ostensibly to reduce death tolls, even though people felt that their religious convictions were being violated.22 Whether the burial practices were causing extra deaths is immaterial. The point is, religious convictions were reshaped, from the top down, to suit the agenda of an outside group. What has happened once, can and will happen again.

Put into context, Harari’s comments about AI seem much more concerning. Harari views himself as a prophet, proclaiming potential doom unless humanity does something. He views religion in general with disfavor, but the idea of an AI-generated religious book that lacks what he terms “the myths of other religions” appears more palatable. Such an idea would also align with the WEF’s stated goals. After all, an AI-generated religious text could be programmed to promote the values of the WEF: lack of private property, restricted freedom of movement, and transhumanism. These values also meld perfectly with Harari’s view that liberty, including cognitive liberty—along with equality and rights—is a socially constructed myth.23 Keep in mind, Harari said such a religion would be essentially correct. He does not believe in absolute right and wrong, so the only correct is that which aligns with his views.

What Is AI?

Essentially, AI is software programmed in ways that try to replicate human intelligence.24 Like an artificial brain, AI can be designed to receive sensory input from devices like cameras or microphones, interpret the data, and perform specific actions in response—including by means of an artificial body (a robot).

“Weak” AI, which is programmed to perform highly specific tasks, is already widespread. But “strong” AI, which would theoretically equal or surpass human intelligence, is still speculative. Weak AI relies mainly on “rote learning,” or memorizing information from past experiences to solve specified problems. Strong AI, however, would supposedly achieve general intelligence—the ability to apply knowledge from past experiences to solve new problems.

Already, some researchers believe they have found “sparks of general intelligence” in ChatGTP-4.25 This program, the latest version of the AI language model that’s been making global shockwaves, can generate complex written content in seconds—including stories, poems, movie plots, essays, sermons, answers to abstract questions, and much more.

Just what is ChatGPT? While the “chat” part alludes to the program’s function as an advanced chatbot, the “GPT” bit stands for “generative pre-trained transformer.” Transformer indicates the type of AI system involved, which is designed to work like an artificial network of neurons (brain cells). Pre-trained means the program has already “learned” to function by analyzing massive sets of data—in this case, text from sources across the internet. And generative refers to the program’s ability to create humanlike written materials based on that data.

Benefits and Risks

Ultimately, AI is a tool—albeit an incredibly powerful one. And like any tool, humans can apply AI (whether intentionally or unintentionally) for helpful or harmful purposes.

Ultimately, AI is a tool—albeit an incredibly powerful one.

Already, a wide range of AI applications exist to make tasks easier, quicker, and more efficient. Current or prospective AI technologies may benefit multiple fields including medicine, agriculture, business, finances, education, and the military. For instance, one research team observed that AI’s benefits for medicine alone include “improving diagnostic accuracy, detecting diseases before they express, improving prevention, designing patient-centred care pathways, enhancing epidemiology, supporting population health management, and reducing the negative impact of social determinants of health.”26 However, the researchers continue, “The same technologies pose some critical threats to patient privacy and safety, care providers safety from liability, opportunities for employment, patient engagement, clinician trust and scientific progress itself.”27

These observations highlight how even within one field, the same technology can harbor both benefits and risks we need to consider if we’re to use the technology wisely. One foreseeable risk, for instance, is that growing reliance on AI for written content may contribute to a “dumbed-down” society of people who cannot think, research, or communicate for themselves—and are therefore easy to control. Professor Harari also noted several additional risks in the interview quoted above, explaining how abuses of AI’s abilities (including its potential for manipulating people’s political opinions) could undermine democracy, fuel an “arms” race between nations, and leave only dictatorships surviving.28

Others fear even worse scenarios. For instance, a recent opinion editorial published by Scientific American claimed,

Once AI systems are built into robots, they will be able to act in the real world, rather than only the virtual (electronic) world, with the same degree of superintelligence, and will of course be able to replicate and improve themselves at a superhuman pace. Any defenses or protections we attempt to build into these AI “gods,” on their way toward godhood, will be anticipated and neutralized with ease by the AI once it reaches superintelligence status . . . We won’t be able to control them because anything we think of, they will have already thought of, a million times faster than us.29

Still others, however, laud these qualities in hopes of creating AI “gods.” For instance, as AiG has previously reported, Elon Musk has stated that Larry Page, a cofounder of Google, wanted AI programmers to develop “digital super-intelligence, basically a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible.”30 If mixed with humans, the goal could be to create the homo deus that Harari writes of.

AI Is Not God

God’s Word clearly answers such attempts to elevate creation—including human creations—to a godlike status. Here are just a few examples:

All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. (Isaiah 44:9–11)

I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God . . . (Isaiah 45:5)

They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. (Isaiah 45:20)

Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. (Jonah 2:8)

Although far more sophisticated than the statue idols that people in biblical times worshipped, “digital gods” are still the works of human hands—lifeless things that cannot love, cannot save, and cannot redeem creation from its sin-cursed state.

AI Is Not the Authority for Truth

Relatedly, because AI programs have human developers and rely on text from human authors, AI is prone to being tainted by the errors and biases of fallen, finite, fallible humans. (You can see just a few important examples of these errors and biases in this video with AiG’s Bryan Osborne.)

For all these reasons, humans must not fall into the trap of looking to AI as the ultimate authority for truth. Only the Word of our all-knowing, infinite, infallible God can fill that role. But voices like Professor Harari’s seem to suggest that AI should function as humanity’s authority for truth—at least, for spiritual truth—by generating new “holy books.” Harari cannot say these books would be “correct” without setting himself as the authority for truth above God’s Word, as humans have attempted to do since Eden.

AI Is Not the Church’s Spiritual Leader

Even without overtly “worshipping” AI or revering AI-generated text as a “holy book,” Christians may still fall into the trap of looking to AI for other forms of spiritual leadership. Recently, for instance, a church in Germany hosted a service entirely produced by AI—featuring AI worship leaders, an AI pastor, and an AI-generated sermon. Such “services” not only harbor the risk of importing biased, unbiblical messages into the teachings rather than “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), but AI “church” also contradicts the biblical concept of church. Biblically, church is not a spectator sport where people download entertainment and information from whatever source—human or digital—happens to provide it. Church is the fully human body of Christ, who gather in fellowship around the worship, Word, and remembrance of our fully divine and fully human Savior. Robots do not belong either as participants in the pews or pastors in the pulpits.

On that note, another way churches might forfeit spiritual leadership to AI is if pastors increasingly use AI to generate sermons. While AI could be applied for helpful purposes to assist with research, summarizing sources, or similar tasks, pastors who relegate their exegetical duties to AI put themselves and their congregations in danger on multiple levels. For starters, conceding spiritual authority to AI opens the door for unbiblical (or simply non-factual) teachings to reach congregants—especially if pastors are not staying in the Word themselves to catch such errors. But perhaps more significantly, reliance on AI cheats the pastor out of his biblical responsibility to study to show himself approved, diving into the Word of God for himself to become “complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”31

Conclusion

In summary, Harari’s recent calls for an AI-generated Bible did not appear in isolation but are embedded in a much broader agenda that sets up humans (or human technology) as the authority for truth. This agenda, apparent in the openly stated goals of the WEF, envisions a new form of humanity united under a system of global governance, shared property, and manmade spirituality. These realities highlight the appeal of an AI-authored “holy book” which could provide spiritual guidance in line with the worldview beliefs specified for the new society.

As the tower of Babel reminds us, human ambitions to apply technology in hopes of collectively ascending to God’s level are nothing new—and God can easily thwart them if he so chooses.

AI would make for an especially compelling spiritual leader figure for this type of society, as AI’s superhuman-like powers might easily distract people from the reality that its answers are not neutral but the result of programming by fallible, fallen, biased humans. AI is not God, cannot function as humanity’s authority for truth, and must not be treated as a spiritual leader.

What does all this mean for Christians? First, although the scope and scale of these realities are certainly daunting, Christians must rest assured that God is sovereign over his creation, none of this surprises him, and he will not allow human schemes to unfold apart from his purposes. As the tower of Babel reminds us, human ambitions to apply technology in hopes of collectively ascending to God’s level are nothing new—and God can easily thwart them if he so chooses.

Christians can also respond by continuing to faithfully study and stand on the actual Word of God, remembering to apply biblical critical thinking in recognition of AI’s fallibility. Along the way, we’re also wise to keep our research, writing, and communication skills sharp rather than dull our God-given mental capacities by increasingly outsourcing such tasks to AI. Pastors, especially, must not fall into the trap of letting AI take over their biblical responsibilities. Finally, Christians can approach these times as opportunities to share the gospel, pointing others to the true hope for humanity that digital “gods” can never offer.