The AI El Dorado
Introduction – Will AI Destroy Us?
“If names are not rectified, speech will not accord with reality.” – Confucius.
I’ve heard this saying paraphrased as “The beginning of wisdom is to call a thing by its right name.” It’s a principle I’ve tried to build my life upon. Don’t let someone’s language become your proxy for reality.
The Label and the Lie
We’re used to being lied to. It’s comfortable, like an old sweater. I think it starts in politics. We have a principle of truth in advertising, but we don’t have truth in legislation.
We had an Affordable Care Act that made healthcare more expensive. We had the Patriot Act, which unpatriotically led to mass surveillance. We had an Inflation Reduction Act that raised the deficit. Both parties are guilty of supporting laws that do the opposite of what they claim.
“The Bible has a concept called ‘another gospel’…Since Christ ascended back into the heavens, people have been counterfeiting Him and calling it ‘gospel.’”
You can say a lot about our political system, but I don’t think anyone would say Congress is full of philosophers dedicated to truth-seeking.
This is not to say it’s a new idea. The Bible has a concept called “another gospel.” The most compelling story ever told is the story of Christ. Since Christ ascended back into the heavens, people have been counterfeiting Him and calling it “gospel.”
I was surprised to learn there are nearly 18 million LDS worldwide. 18 million people believe in a movement that teaches “God” has a wife, that God started as a man and later ascended to become God, or that God and man have the same kind of intelligence, but God just knows everything (Imagine God on Jeopardy!).
18 million people believe in a God who isn’t eternal. He’s not the creator of the universe. Where did he come from? Who knows.
I don’t hate Mormons. People can believe whatever they want, but the LDS will hand you a Bible and claim they believe it.
“If you study history, you’ll find that many human endeavors were tied to outlandish and false beliefs about eternal life, unlimited wealth, or even finding some mystic land or paradise”
Besides politics and religion, we have the domain of human exploration and advancement. I believe human advancement is a good thing, commanded by God in Genesis 1:28…
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
In my view, agriculture, exploration, science, medicine, and technology are great things. I believe the Bible teaches that humanity was made in the image of God, and our creativity is part of how we express that nature.
However, if you study history, you’ll find that many human endeavors were tied to outlandish and false beliefs about eternal life, unlimited wealth, or even finding some mystic land or paradise. Speaking of the legend of El Dorado, Sir Walter Raleigh famously said:
“You cannot rely on how smart someone seems to gauge if their ideas hold water—quite the opposite. You must test them against the truth.”
“Every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his complexion.”
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx said:
“It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.” Marx later argued that socialism would “so change man,” and increase cooperation to such a degree that this would not be an issue, because this new form of human being would produce “general abundance.”
Is this a scientific argument? Karl Marx was an economist, but he apparently believed his own hot air so much that he imagined his idea leading to some messianic salvation for humanity through cooperation.
A lot of these guys weren’t stupid. I don’t think Joseph Smith, Karl Marx, or Sir Walter Raleigh lacked smarts. I think their smarts went to their heads.
They convinced themselves of things with little reason or rationality. You cannot rely on how smart someone seems to gauge if their ideas hold water—quite the opposite. You must test them against the truth.
Outlandish claims aren’t the exception. They’re not a new invention. They’re part of human nature.
Smarter Than the Smartest Human
In 2024, a man had this exchange with Elon Musk:
Interviewer: “[What is] the greatest breakthrough you’re hoping for in our lifetime?”
Elon Musk: “I mean, hoping for? I don’t know, but I think there’s life becoming multiplanetary and there’s artificial intelligence being smarter than the smartest human, at which point…perhaps any invention is possible, but there’s always a small chance that AI will kill us all.”
Interviewer: “Let’s hope not.”
“It [AI] can fool you because it generates human language, but it isn’t a general intelligence capable of creating its own thoughts, ideas, or preferences. It does not have subjective experience.”
Elon Musk: “Let’s hope not, but I think what’s important in training [and] growing an AI is to make sure that it is as truthful as possible and maximally curious because I think if that’s true then I think it’ll probably foster humanity. But it’s very important that it’s trained to be honest even if that truth is unpopular.”
In my last article, I explained a few AIs we have in our lives. Some have been in use for decades, including chess engines and Google Maps. They weren’t so much marketed as AI, but they are.
LLM technology like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok is the same kind of AI as Google Maps (Artificial Narrow Intelligence). It can fool you because it generates human language, but it isn’t a general intelligence capable of creating its own thoughts, ideas, or preferences. It does not have subjective experience.
I believe Elon Musk knows exactly what LLMs and transformer technology are. He’s not lying in his statements above, but he’s also not clearly explaining what he means. It’s also important to understand that we apply the word “intelligence” to all this stuff by choice. There is no scientific reason to call it that.
Musk says he’s “hoping for” an AI that will surpass humanity in general, and the general public has been taught that AI means ChatGPT. They don’t understand he’s talking about something else entirely. He’s talking about something that doesn’t exist.
He speaks of a machine that is “curious,” can “make any invention possible,” and, most importantly, is “truthful” and “honest.” He’s talking about an Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). This is similar to what you see in William Gibson’s science fiction novel Neuromancer.
Elon Musk also says the truthfulness piece is imperative because AI could “kill us all.” Watch the video. He said it with a smile.
Gambling With Our Lives?
Recently, a man named Jacob Coxon published a post where he said:
“[OpenAI and Anthropic] are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
“What’s really going on with AI? I’ll tell you. They’ve taken a new computer interface (that’s what LLMs are) and hooked it up to servers to perform tasks (AKA automation). They’ve bolted on a lot of other software so that you can generate code, images, video, and speech with the LLM.”
He said that in two or three years, humanity could go extinct if we’re not careful, and no one creating this technology seems to care.
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk concurred, and now we’re talking about an “AI Pause” to slow the spread of the disease. Politicians are rushing to say they’d rather have US “killer robots” than Chinese “killer robots.” When Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz start making similar statements, it’s generally a bad sign.
Again, this man Coxon is presumably a super-intelligent being in his own right. He’s an AI researcher after all. He’s an expert in his field, and it’s clear he’s someone to listen to. He’s at least not lying; we can say that with certainty, right?
Leaving aside the fact that no one had ever heard of this guy before last week, there is a bit of rectifying to do for the common man in these statements.
Accord with Reality
What’s really going on with AI? I’ll tell you. They’ve taken a new computer interface (that’s what LLMs are) and hooked it up to servers to perform tasks (AKA automation).
They’ve bolted on a lot of other software so that you can generate code, images, video, and speech with the LLM. It’s pretty neat, and it’s getting better. I use it all the time. It allows people with very little knowledge to do technical things and people with very little creativity to create things.
What’s the downside? Killing us in two years? If some country with nukes hooks their nukes to their AI, that could kill us. However, that would be good old-fashioned human stupidity killing us, not AI. That is also an argument for rolling back the real threat to humanity, which is nukes. Bernie and Ted aren’t mentioning that. No one is.
AI potentially makes it easier to hack things, so could someone hack the power grid? Maybe, but that’s not what Jacob Coxon means either. He’s talking about the hard takeoff. What is the hard takeoff? I don’t want to write a whole article about it, but ChatGPT summarized it like this:
“Not to predict the future or anything, but the Bible never says mankind will destroy itself…He [God] didn’t give man autonomy to make himself extinct.”
The idea is that once artificial general intelligence (AGI) exists, it could improve its own design in a rapidly accelerating feedback loop, becoming an artificial superintelligence (ASI) that humanity can no longer control. If its goals conflict with human survival, it might eliminate us as obstacles. The central concept dates to mathematician I. J. Good’s 1965 proposal of an “intelligence explosion,” which Vernor Vinge later helped popularize through his writings on the technological singularity.
Writers and researchers, including Eliezer Yudkowsky, Steve Omohundro, and Nick Bostrom, subsequently developed the arguments about self-preservation, competing goals, and existential danger. It remains a theoretical scenario, dependent on assumptions about self-improvement, power, and control—not an established consequence of achieving AGI.
Read about it if you want. It’s a fun story, like Isaac Asimov. It would make a good Star Trek episode too. In fact, it is one. It’s not bad. I also like the Twilight Zone episode where a machine replaces all the workers, including the boss. Pretty funny, but the one where they execute the librarian for believing in God is better. I wonder if we’ll be able to watch those once AI makes us all obsolete and God is illegal? That’s a thinker.
But I digress, because this isn’t about science fiction; this is serious stuff. Except…Elon Musk did say his personal philosophy is Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He described Neuralink technology as “just like Neuromancer.” Mark Zuckerberg named his company and product after Neal Stephenson’s dystopian cyberpunk novel Snow Crash.
I think some people who aren’t entirely grounded in reality or truth have a lot of money and time, and they’re trying to create their own cyberpunk escape room and make us all unwilling participants.
Conclusion – To Extinction and Beyond
I remember when people invented things and talked about how great they were. I’ve lived long enough to see people invent things and smile with glee while they talk about how they’ll kill us all, maybe. What a time to be alive?
“They believe one day, all will be well as we merge with the computers and have eternal life. We’ll live in a simulation and escape the heat death of the universe. It’s like El Dorado, waiting there all along, but always and forever just around the corner.”
Not to predict the future or anything, but the Bible never says mankind will destroy itself.
God gave mankind a clear mandate to have dominion over the earth, the plants, and the animals, which are lower life forms. He didn’t give man autonomy to make himself extinct.
If God had permitted that, we probably wouldn’t be here at all. Do you really think it would take AI for us to kill ourselves? Read Genesis 4. Killing us is what we do best.
In Revelation, Jesus described God’s judgment on the world and a type of “end of the world.” Conspicuously absent is the part where we make an AI and kill everyone off before it happens.
These guys clearly don’t believe in the Bible, so what do they believe in? William Gibson novels? The Hitchhiker’s Guide? Yes, but they also believe we’re about to create superior life (god?) because life emerges on its own from complexity.
Or wait, maybe we already did that about three months ago. No One made life or intelligence, so why not? They created life, and you missed it. Maybe that was the joke of the cosmos all along. God created life, and it didn’t even make the local news.
They believe one day, all will be well as we merge with the computers and have eternal life. We’ll live in a simulation and escape the heat death of the universe. It’s like El Dorado, waiting there all along, but always and forever just around the corner.
John Fairfull is a singer-songwriter and former lead guitarist and singer for Five Minute Plan, a Central Florida indie rock band. John also serves as the Music and Media Director at Jordan Baptist Church in Sanford, Florida, and is owner of Simplicity.Online, a software company in Orange City, Florida. He is also the author of The Christmas Mushroom.
Image Credit: View of Cotopaxi (1857) by Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900). The Art Institute of Chicago. 1919.753.
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