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For decades, new technology has been demonised – literally. From William Blake’s “dark, Satanic mills” to the sinister rapist computer of Demon Seed, new technology has always fuelled a religious loathing and suspicion in many minds. Even children’s toys become objects of occult fear: the Ouija board was created and marketed as a fun children’s novelty – just another board game. But within 10 years, it was enthusiastically adopted by occultists; by the 1920s, it was well on the way to becoming established as a staple of cheap horror movies.
The Catholic Church, for its part, expressly forbids the use of Ouija boards by the faithful. Human Life International damns the boards as a gateway to malign supernatural forces.
The Ouija board has a new competitor for technological devilry, though. You guessed it: AI.
Exorcists claim they get accustomed to being vomited on, sworn at and having nails spat at them by people possessed by the devil. But experts lining up to teach them new tricks at an exorcism course in Rome say they now face a new threat: AI-fuelled satanism.
“Artificial intelligence is a great power – a force for both good and evil – and can therefore be used for devil worshipping,” said Father Luis Ramirez Almanza, a Mexican priest who runs the annual training course for exorcists.
Speakers who are booked to address the audience at the May event include Father Fortunato Di Noto, a Sicilian priest who fights satanists who combine their devil-worshipping with paedophilia.
As H P Lovecraft said, you don’t have to believe that Santa is real to acknowledge that people will celebrate Christmas. The whole ‘Satanic paedophile’ thing may have been discredited by the QAnon and Pizzagate nutbars, but – just because they were nutters doesn’t mean they were completely wrong. Satanism has always had a peculiar attraction for jaded perverts wanting to spice up their depravities. As the horrific revelations stemming from recent arrests in Sydney show, Satanic paedophiles are a very real and very disgusting thing.
And, as criminals and perverts always have, they are all-too-fast to figure out ways to use new technology to further their monstrous activities.
“We believe these groups are using AI to generate images of children involved in satanic rites,” he said. “Using children appeals to them because it’s a form of power being exercised over the innocent.”
David Murgia, who runs Catholic Risk and Insurances Services, a research group which tracks cults, said: “Police tell us satanists are using AI to hide their content online and communicate with each other.”
Father Ramirez said another speaker, Beatrice Ugolini, an academic, will discuss how occult groups in Italy – thought to total 263 – are using AI to generate the symbols they use in their rites.
This doesn’t make the technology itself at fault. No more than a Ouija board is anything but a printed scrap of wood. AI is like Isaac Asimov’s fictional robots: the machines themselves are neither good nor evil (this is something the movie I, Robot completely failed to grasp about Asimov), it’s the humans who use them. The only reason Asimov’s robots do anything ‘bad’ is by the machinations of humans. Similarly, AI itself can only ever do what it’s programmed and instructed to by humans.
Artificial intelligence has long been considered by some as the devil itself, including Elon Musk, who likened it in 2014 to a demon being summoned with no plans to control it.
Asked on Tuesday if it was Satan, ChatGPT, an AI programme, responded: “No – I’m not the devil. I’m just an AI created by OpenAI to answer questions and have conversations.
“I’m here to help, not to worry you,” it added.
The AI evangelists are the equal and opposite nonsense of the AI haters.
Some Silicon Valley moguls have seen AI as more of an all-knowing, god-like entity rather than the devil. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has described it as “magic intelligence in the sky”.
No, it’s just a computer program. A very sophisticated one, but at heart, still just a computer program.
It’s the malevolent monkeys programming it and using it that you have to worry about.
