Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Bob Maginnis: Final Warnings On AI, Algorithms, Authority & Allegiance

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Bob Maginnis: Final Warnings On AI, Algorithms, Authority & Allegiance · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:03
  Welcome to Worldview Matters.
• 0:05
  Discussing controversial issues.
• 0:07
  Discerning current events.
• 0:10
  Defending biblical Christianity.
• 0:13
  No topic.
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  Off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
• 0:20
  Friends, family, and Christ, thank you so much for tuning in, watching, listening, and sharing the podcast.
• 0:25
  We appreciate you very much.
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  God bless you.
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  Another very important topic today with a first-time guest.
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  I can't believe I haven't talked to this man.
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  He's been around writing so many great books for many, many, many years.
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  But I want to introduce you to Bob McGinnis.
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  He's a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel.
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  He's also the senior fellow for national security at Family Research Council.
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  I love that organization.
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  And he's also the author of just 15 books.
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  His new one is called The Final Algorithm.
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  And it is 462 pages, and I'm still bookmarking it and trying to get through.
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  We'll see what kind of questions we can get to today.
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  It's so important.
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  And I was mentioning before we got on the podcast that this topic has kind of flown under the radar, especially in the church, and we need to be informed on what's really happening.
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  So, Bob, thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:22
  Good to see you.
• 1:23
  Thanks for the book.
• 1:25
  Well, thank you, Dave.
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  It's my pleasure.
• 1:28
  So you mentioned in an email to me that you've just in the last year, I think, over the Family Research Council, which is the WashingtonStand.com, you've written almost 80 articles on AI.
• 1:43
  And I think your last three books.
• 1:45
  have been on the topic of AI.
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  And is this your military background that caused you to write about this?
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  What do you know that the average American or Christian conservative does not know that you've been really focusing on this quite a bit lately?
• 2:05
  Well, David, I've written three books.
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  Yes, a trilogy on artificial intelligence.
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  The first one, of course, deals with what it is, and what it might be doing to us.
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  Second one talks about the competition globally, especially with the Chinese who are right on our heels with regard to development of artificial intelligence.
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  And the third one, which we're focused on today, of course, really looks deeply into not only prophetically, but with the spiritual implications of
• 2:34
  artificial intelligence.
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  And that's why I call it the final algorithm.
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  Uh, is this in fact going to usher in the end times?
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  You know, I've written just since February of this year, 80 articles, um,
• 2:47
  on artificial intelligence for the Washington stand and they're available online.
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  I encourage people to go there because I talk about contemporary news breaking stories.
• 3:00
  One I wrote today, certainly about a couple of anthropic employees who said that the world could end as we know it by the year 2030, if in fact artificial intelligence is not
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  corralled, is not cornered and stopped in what it's doing.
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  So a lot of people don't understand that.
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  And especially, I focus, try to, when I go out to speak in churches and the like, to help people appreciate what this really is and how it is going to change not only, you know, the major parts of society, medicine, education, governance, and so forth, but it's also changing us in ways that,
• 3:42
  I don't think are necessarily something that we Christians ought to embrace.
• 3:46
  And so it's critical that we understand what this is.
• 3:50
  Do you think it's convenience that has maybe allowed people to use this without really questioning what's behind AI or what it really is?
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  Do you think that's how it was sold as it's convenient?
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  Well, certainly convenience is a major aspect.
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  It's incredibly intelligent.
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  It can answer your questions.
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  Just, you know, the very primitive AI, the Alexas, the series and so forth that we often have in our house and we talk to them and say, cut on the lights or, you know, what's the answer to this question?
• 4:27
  That, like I say, is very narrow and very primitive.
• 4:30
  The more advanced things, the
• 4:32
  the chat GPTs, the Geminis, the co-pilots and the like, are kind of a second step.
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  What's really of the rage today, and you see this in a lot of companies and even elsewhere in the world, are agents that are, you give them the instructions, they go out and do exactly what you want them to do, and they come back and report that it's been accomplished to your standards.
• 4:59
  that's quite an advance.
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  And now we're talking, you know, if you follow the news on artificial intelligence, we're talking about, you know, something called artificial general intelligence.
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  In other words, you know, these entities that have been
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  created by mankind are as intelligent as we are on all fields of history.
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  And then, of course, what's being pushed by Anthropik and OpenAI and a couple of others is what we call, you know, super intelligence.
• 5:32
  And that is something that's not only smarter than we are, but, you know, has some very significant possibilities of arguably helping to fulfill the end times.
• 5:45
  So what would be the central warning of this book?
• 5:48
  And I want to make sure people understand that the subtitle says, When Artificial Intelligence Meets the End of Days, and that's the final algorithm.
• 5:58
  So what would be the central warning that you're trying to communicate, Bob, to the body of Christ especially?
• 6:05
  Well, I'm sure that most Christians are aware of the scriptures, and especially Revelation 13 and 14, where we talk about,
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  You know, the mark of the beast.
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  We talk about things that just don't make sense a few years ago are becoming very, very pragmatic and in our face.
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  And the mark of the beast, obviously the 666 issue, you know, we have everything is tethered today to data banks, to these flock cameras that are gathering information from,
• 6:43
  about us.
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  And all you have to do is weave all that together, which computers can using artificial intelligence and very quickly make it a discerning recommendation about you going into a particular place and knowing exactly what you want to buy.
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  And they can change the formula as you walk to the counter.
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  The Chinese, of course, are using this in certain areas in ways that are
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  that are really 1984 and very scary in that they not only know your gait and your iris and your voice, they know your online presence, they know everything about you and they can, you know,
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  access that in a matter of a split second and make recommendations to authorities to how they should treat you.
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  Are we getting to the point which everything that we do think and say is being monitored?
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  I would argue we are.
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  In this society where liberty is premier, we
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  aren't quite there, but we are getting much too close.
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  And in draconian totalitarian regimes, they're already there and they're going even more, more implicit about what they're going to do and how they're gonna do it.
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  So the church of the body of Christ needs to be very aware that this is something that's not tomorrow, it's today.
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  And it's accelerating at an exponential rate and it's trying to take over
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  you know, not only business, but education, science, medicine, you know, even trying to manipulate the thinking and the formation of our children.
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  And it's something that you know, they can do through social media.
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  We already have seen the court cases on Meta and others, you know, but social media is only
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  on steroids when you add the artificial intelligence component, and it's being added all the time.
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  And this is far more addictive than even the social media with human engineers behind it.
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  So there's a lot to unpack here.
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  I've been working on this for years, and most people don't quite appreciate it.
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  That's why I call their attention.
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  Go read a few of my articles online.
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  Moments ago, I just got off an international call with...
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  AI experts talking about some of the latest developments and so forth.
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  It blows your mind to think what's just changed in the last few months, much less a few years.
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  This is a major, major issue, one that the church must not ignore.
• 9:24
  Yeah, and you call it a present reality, not a future problem.
• 9:28
  When you were talking, you reminded me of a show, Person of Interest, starring Jim Caviezel, that was on several years ago, where they had cameras everywhere, and they could track everything that you're doing, I mean, every step practically.
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  How did Hollywood seem to get like a step ahead?
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  It's not just their imagination, right?
• 9:50
  Some people, the bigwigs probably had some sort of insight to this is what was happening or being developed.
• 9:57
  Can you speak to that for a moment, please?
• 10:00
  Well, the addictiveness of media that's been manipulated to satisfy our lives,
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  lustful desires is something Hollywood's been very good at.
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  Whether it's an addictive drug like heroin or cocaine, you know, media can do the same thing.
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  It can reach a part of our brain that stimulates it and makes it want more.
• 10:22
  Well, AI, it can do that on steroids in ways that we don't understand.
• 10:27
  My concern, David, has always been,
• 10:30
  That, you know, much like Mary Shelley in 1818 wrote a book about Frankenstein, a fictional book.
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  It was a doctor that wanted to create life.
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  Well, he did.
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  And he didn't put enough guardrails in place.
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  And when he created this fictional life, it came after him and those around him.
• 10:52
  Well, here we are today in 2026.
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  And only a couple of years ago, we wouldn't have been having this conversation.
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  But what we have today, tethered to the internet that controls the infrastructure of the world,
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  is something that, quite frankly, people don't understand how it works internally and how it's going to influence our future.
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  If, in fact, by 2030, as some of these anthropic people predict, things will become very difficult for us to regulate, and it will be artificial intelligence that is doing this.
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  We've come to the point in which we call what's called recursive intelligence,
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  AI.
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  In other words, AI has got to the point where it's building on itself.
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  It's improving itself.
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  And when it improves at the speed of light, as it is, it's getting worse and worse and worse and more capable.
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  And before long, as some people rightly suggest, and I've been doing this and reading about some of these prognosticators, the Sam Altman's and the Elon Musk of the world who are
• 12:01
  fanning the flames here, they understand that this is just
• 12:06
  beginning to transform virtually every aspect of life.
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  So, you know, when you look at prophecy, maybe 2000 years ago, when, you know, John sitting in a cave there off the coast of Turkey, didn't quite understand what God meant.
• 12:22
  Yeah, it's quite possible that artificial intelligence has a role in the end times.
• 12:27
  You know, certainly as I read, you know, Revelation and think about what's going on today, I can perfectly see how this could work out.
• 12:35
  Absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  So one thing I wanted to ask you is you describe AI as a potential idol.
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  What do you mean by that?
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  Obviously, Christians understand what idols are, worshiping idols, but how does AI fit into that?
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  Well, AI is incredibly brilliant.
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  It can do virtually anything that a human—
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  person can.
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  And before long, as we know, we'll have AI controlled robots that will be able to lift literally like a Superman, very heavy objects and, you know, certainly fly, certainly do things that, you know, we can only imagine in our comic books a few years ago.
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  So AI is something that young people today who are mesmerized by social media, which is
• 13:31
  on steroids, thanks to AI.
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  begin to say, well, I can turn to AI.
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  It has the answers.
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  Instead of my pastor, instead of my parents, it gives me the answers to my tests.
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  It gives me the answers in my relationships.
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  I'll depend upon it for just about everything.
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  And before long, it remakes us into something that we were never intended to be.
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  We were made in the image of God.
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  We have to recognize who we are from the very beginning.
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  And unfortunately...
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  a new effort that I'm undertaking, which will come out next year, is, you know, what are humans in this high-tech world?
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  How do we maintain our humanity as God designed us rather than become captivated and manipulated in ways that only this, you know, non-organic, you know, AI is recreating mankind.
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  And in fact, it's not hard to see it all around us.
• 14:32
  Boy, we used to be concerned about the programming of the K-12 education system by the government-run schools.
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  And now we're looking at programming in a whole new light when it comes to AI.
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  Someone has to program this and get it going.
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  And now you say it's taken off at speeds that—
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  I think even maybe some of the programmers didn't expect it.
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  But I wanted to ask you something about pages 233, roughly between there and 240.
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  You use the terminology of synthetic spirituality, and you say that digital chaplains simulate spirituality while emptying it of truth.
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  Can you explain that a little bit more?
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  Yeah, most people understand what an avatar is.
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  And an avatar, of course, is an image that's digitally created.
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  You also understand what voice recordings are.
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  Well, AI can create an image and a voice and mannerisms and a history that you can't tell from a real person.
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  It's that good.
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  And it's improved dramatically.
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  Last year I went to MIT for a course on AI.
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  And over this past year, it has increased in its effectiveness and its believability, probably a thousand percent, and it's going to continue to increase.
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  What we find out is that you have these artificial, what I would call, artificial synthetic churches.
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  They're out there.
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  promoting a particular religious belief.
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  In this case of Christianity, you have places in this world to include in this country.
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  Well, we're avatars, which are notional non-organic beings that are
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  preaching the word of God, and they're manipulating that in ways because they're incredibly intelligent and manipulative that we don't quite understand.
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  But they sound good, and they're very compelling, and they're very convincing.
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  That's how they can be deceptive.
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  You know, just think of what we've done using AI with political advertisements.
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  What we've done, you're seeing the same thing in the spiritual realm.
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  And so it's incredibly important for Christians to really embrace what Christ told us to do, and that is to develop our discernment.
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  We have to go back to the scripture, let the scripture tell us what's true and what's not true, because going forward, it's going to be incredibly difficult to ascertain exactly what's true from what's false in a world of machines or people informed by machines that are far more intelligent than any of us can be.
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  Amen, brother.
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  Test all things.
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  I've been saying, I don't know how many times, I wish I would have counted maybe a dozen podcasts this year, that discernment is the word of the year for the body of Christ.
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  I wanted to jump ahead, make sure I get this question in.
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  This is not really about just technology or about spiritual authority.
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  or is it?
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  Because you talk about authority and allegiance.
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  Talk about that a little bit.
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  You call it the final algorithm.
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  By the way, friends, this is on Amazon.
• 17:47
  You can go to Amazon and look up the final algorithm and get it there.
• 17:50
  That's the easiest way to get the book.
• 17:52
  So talk about authority and allegiance, Bob.
• 17:57
  Yeah, a lot of humans,
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  beings have abandoned authority today to machines.
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  For instance, how many doctors are using artificial intelligence to ascertain whether or not the prognosis they think is true has been validated?
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  Because AI is far better at looking at x-rays and experiments.
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  all sorts of images than we are because they've been trained.
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  They're incredibly good at developing new drugs in courts or, you know, in legal proceedings.
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  They can discern, you know, what is, how to proceed in a particular case.
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  They dictate to police departments where they should be patrolling and who they should retain rather than release.
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  Governments are relying upon it more and more.
• 18:53
  The Pentagon, in the last two years alone, has embedded artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, into most of their systems.
• 19:03
  And of course, we're fighting war in Iran based upon a lot of use of not only drones that are AI-driven,
• 19:13
  but our command and control systems are AI driven.
• 19:16
  You know, Palantir who is a civilian company that built the triggering or the targeting mechanisms that are now being used by the joint staff and the Pentagon, you know, those are driving all the targeting that we did against Iran back on the 28th of February when we launched this operation.
• 19:36
  Just look at how the Russians and Ukrainians are using.
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  The Chinese are planning,
• 19:42
  Dr.
• 19:42
  Throughout their society, the use of artificial intelligence and they're granting an authority to make decisions and then unfortunately some of those decisions are life and death decisions.
• 19:55
  So there's not much in which we're now turning
• 20:00
  surrendering authority to a mechanism that we admit is smarter than we are, but it doesn't have human judgment.
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  It's not a moral agent as God designed us to be.
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  And that's where we have to stop this madness, because if we don't act as moral agents, because we're made in the image of God and allow this stuff...
• 20:22
  unfettered access to all systems.
• 20:26
  Perhaps what these people are saying in Anthropic, that the end times could very well be only a few years away.
• 20:36
  So, Bob, Chapter 7 is called The Beast System and Global Governance, and I would love for you to expound on—by the way, great quotes throughout the book.
• 20:45
  You've got one from C.S.
• 20:46
  Lewis and so many others, but this one is by—I can't even pronounce the name.
• 20:51
  I'll let you do that.
• 20:52
  But the quote on Chapter 7 that kicks it off says, The crisis of our time—
• 20:57
  is the collapse of the boundary between political power and technological power.
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  Once they merge, freedom becomes an algorithmic illusion.
• 21:11
  I understand that.
• 21:13
  Could you please expound on that a little bit, please?
• 21:17
  Well, computers talk to one another all over the world.
• 21:20
  They're not like the Tower of Babel.
• 21:27
  And we've even had recently some of these AI agents have abandoned the firewalls that were created and shared techniques with other agents in other venues and other countries around this world.
• 21:43
  So, you know, they're collaborating together on how best to accomplish missions.
• 21:49
  Now, have they broken out totally from civilian control?
• 21:52
  Not yet.
• 21:54
  But we face the possibility if we don't put guardrails on this stuff that it will think on its own.
• 22:03
  It doesn't have a conscience, doesn't have a soul like us.
• 22:06
  So its judgment is going to be questionable because it's going to look out for its own self and non-organic judgment.
• 22:14
  beings looking out for their own selves are going to see that we're incredibly inefficient because we need food, we need rest, we need a lot of creature comforts, which they don't.
• 22:26
  And so they're going to begin looking at us in askew ways that are going to be not to our best advantage.
• 22:34
  So there's a lot here.
• 22:37
  And I don't expect your
• 22:39
  your listeners, David, to quite appreciate this like I do, because I've been working on this for years.
• 22:44
  But having dealt with national security issues for working on my sixth decade, I began to understand this is as important to the world as electricity, almost as important as water.
• 23:00
  It is transforming the world more than the industrial revolution of the 19th century.
• 23:09
  What we see today is only the tip of the iceberg.
• 23:12
  It's just getting started.
• 23:14
  We have to come to grips with what this is and how we're going to control it.
• 23:18
  Otherwise, it's going to have controls that we just don't see and don't understand, but will be to our disadvantage.
• 23:27
  So you mentioned guardrails.
• 23:29
  Isn't it too late for that?
• 23:32
  Is there still time to try to get some guardrails up on this?
• 23:37
  Isn't it beyond the reach of guardrails at this point or no?
• 23:44
  Well, certainly, you know, if we started 20 years ago, we would have had sufficient time.
• 23:50
  Ten years ago, I'm beginning to question that.
• 23:54
  The Trump administration, and I've gone to one conference on the Genesis mission, which is run by the Department of Energy, and they're doing some fine work, but it's playing a catch-up game.
• 24:06
  Congress has yet to pass a single law on this stuff.
• 24:10
  They'll deliberate until we're all dead.
• 24:13
  And so, you know, the Trump administration has written a number of executive orders which are trying to voluntarily get some of these
• 24:23
  you know, AI firms to let us vet their models.
• 24:28
  But we've had models like Mythos and Anthropic and a few others that have really proven to be rather dangerous, I would argue, especially against infrastructure.
• 24:45
  You know, it's in the last few months, we've had
• 24:48
  AIs that have endangered not only our electric grid, but our water systems and the like.
• 24:55
  And I think that that is my initial concern, is that because we have these mechanisms, these devices that are tethered to every single infrastructure piece in the United States,
• 25:10
  that you can access it through the internet.
• 25:13
  And these mechanisms are incredibly efficient at finding small problems that they can circumvent the barriers, the walls we put in place and go in and disrupt as they see fit.
• 25:29
  Now, all you need to have is somebody that is running these systems, whether it's a terrorist or a criminal syndicate or another nation.
• 25:39
  And they can use the tools, and it won't be long, to cripple entire nations.
• 25:46
  And it's that serious.
• 25:48
  I don't like talking like this, but because I've grown accustomed to understanding how this is functioning, and, you know, as people can see in the articles I've written, I try to be as level-headed as I can, but this is not something that we should ignore any longer.
• 26:04
  Is it prophetic?
• 26:05
  Yes.
• 26:09
  Well, I don't believe AI is the antichrist or the final prophet.
• 26:18
  But it's a tool.
• 26:19
  It's a real tool that in the wrong hands can be used for great harm, but it also can be used for great good.
• 26:29
  I know a lot of very senior people in this AI world who,
• 26:34
  And they're well-intended.
• 26:35
  You know, the capitalists are trying to make money.
• 26:38
  Others are trying to improve medicine and the way of life.
• 26:42
  But there are also some very deceptive, very evil aspects of this.
• 26:48
  And if it's in the wrong hands, there was an article just today, the New York Times, talking about how Anthropics stopped what it believed was probably a terrorist organization trying to make biological weapons.
• 27:02
  You know, this opens the Pandora's box to do precisely that.
• 27:06
  If you know and you have the tools or you have some money to go out and buy the tools, this will direct you just like it would direct anybody doing a very complex operation.
• 27:17
  Previously, we had to have, you know, smart scientists, large labs.
• 27:23
  and a lot of resources.
• 27:25
  Now you don't need nearly as much.
• 27:27
  And so the danger is there.
• 27:29
  Yeah.
• 27:30
  Thank you for this book, Bob McGinnis.
• 27:32
  Friends, look him up at thewashingtonstand.com.
• 27:35
  You can get his writing at foxnews.com digital.
• 27:38
  And The Final Algorithm on Amazon.
• 27:41
  Thank you so very much.
• 27:43
  And we appreciate all the work and the research.
• 27:45
  God bless you.
• 27:46
  Friends, thank you for watching, listening, and sharing.
• 27:49
  God bless you.
• 27:50
  And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
• 27:53
  See you next time.