Tech’s most mysterious and controversial new account followed me on X. Is it the Antichrist?

Is it a bot? Is it a person? The internet can’t say for sure, and techies are going nuts arguing over it all. Meet @iruletheworldmo — an out-of-nowhere account that almost immediately drew replies from the likes of Sam Altman due to its seemingly acute insider knowledge of impending breakthroughs in so-called “Artificial General Intelligence,” or, more portentous still, so-called “Artificial Superintelligence.”

But what could be more powerful an inducement to give in to that temptation than a 'digital god' built to provide a massive, never-ending, immersive simulation of just those feelings and experiences?

Deep dives into the mysterious provenance of @iruletheworldmo are already out there. Check out Digital Heresy’s trip down the rabbit hole for a (relatively) quick primer, which begins with this basic info:

• Q* (Q-Star) — Q* is a secret project code thing that Open AI and others have been hinting at as some kind of secret sauce algorithm going into the next gen model. Summaries like this post have pieced together that Q* represents a fusion of reinforcement learning and heuristic search to advance AI’s problem-solving capabilities, particularly in complex, logical tasks. It embodies a move toward more human-like reasoning and self-learning abilities, with potential implications for improving the reliability and generalization of AI systems.
• Strawberry — Now that it's done training the model and getting close to release, the hype train has ramped up, culminating in this new association between Q* and Strawberry, which seems to be the street name for the LLM.

I managed to catch a follow from the strawberry-emoji-laden account with a tonally ambiguous reply. It was already clear to me that @iruletheworldmo was dedicated to the idea that humanity was about to be radically transformed by technology that the account owner had a hand in building and/or controlling, so my reaction to its response to my reply was to post a quote from the great monk, theologian, and writer St. John Climacus, author of the "Ladder of Divine Ascent," an enormously influential manual of ascetic spiritual instruction:

“Many have received salvation without prophecies and revelations, without signs and wonders; but without humility no one will enter the marriage chamber”: that is, the kingdom of God, where union with the Lord awaits. That didn’t elicit a reply — not surprising coming from an account that also posted, “i am moloch. destroyer of worlds.”

But that’s not what I came here to warn you about. Because, in addition to the moloch-posting, @iruletheworldmo also posted that “jesus would want ubi. fairly sure.” UBI meaning “universal basic income,” shilled since the pre-AI era as a way to ratchet closer to universal justice in this world.

Not so coincidentally, it was recently revealed that Altman’s OpenAI funded a big UBI study that concluded with worse-than-mixed results. Altman himself is nevertheless on record not only supporting UBI but what he calls “universal basic compute,” a conceptual rival to the “second amendment for compute” that I and others have been pushing for these past several years.

As noted here, OpenAI wants to register GPUs like anti-gun politicians want to register firearms. A second amendment for compute (which I have also laid out as part of a broader digital rights amendment) would discourage that — and the relentless centralization and control of how we use increasingly powerful computation and don’t.

Altman’s — and @iruletheworldmo’s — approach to compute, complete with the use of Altman’s creepy and sometimes explicitly illegal Worldcoin, is essentially to impose on every person a new cyborg identity as parts of a planetary computational whole.

As disturbing or frightening as this future might be to most of the world’s normal human beings, the real trouble is exposed by that pesky reference to Jesus. I’ve half-joked in the past that Altman seems to be auditioning for the part of the Antichrist. The attempt to associate Jesus with UBI — and, by proxy, universal basic compute — underscores what’s at stake.

Now, the following point is a little inside baseball, but it’s important. We’ll all have to get used to becoming acquainted with more stuff like this as digital tech pushes us ever harder into theological territory.

Keeping in mind that the "Ladder of Divine Ascent" emphasizes how the successful, proper, and true spiritual life demands ascetic disciplines and practices, another, much later theologian, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, wrote in the 19th century against a much different spiritual guide that had become increasingly popular in the west — Thomas a Kempis’ "Imitation of Christ." The problem with that text, the bishop observed, was that is “conducts the reader directly into communion with God without previous purification by repentance,” deluding the reader into “rapture from a delight and intoxication attained without difficulty, without self-denunciation, without repentance, without crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24), with flattery of their fallen state.” Imitation of the Lord is impossible without first and always exerting ascetic discipline, which hinges at all times on resisting and denying the tempting desire to be spiritually worthy of exalted feelings and ecstatic experiences.

But what could be more powerful an inducement to give in to that temptation than a “digital god” built to provide a massive, never-ending, immersive simulation of just those feelings and experiences? Many mistakenly assume that the epitome of the Antichrist is the person who most imitates the devil. In fact, Antichrist — any anti-Christ — strives for power and authority by seeming to offer what people seek from God while also doing away with God by replacing Him.

In other words, Antichrist simulates Christ. And in a world where compute that automatically simulates everything and anything is propagandized as utterly transformative AGI or ASI, the temptation to simulate Christ will become immense — for believers and unbelievers alike.

“Let us be warned from this,” wrote the far-seeing Fr. Seraphim Rose: “the religion of the future will not be a mere cult or sect, but a powerful and profound religious orientation which will be absolutely convincing to the mind and heart of modern man.” Contrary to our earthly wishes, according to St. Nektarios of Aegina, “We have deep-rooted infirmities, passions, and flaws, many of which are hereditary. They are corrected not suddenly, [but] rather with patience and perseverance.” Any bot or human trying to direct technology to transform us out of our sacred God-created form into another will lead not to salvation but obliteration.