Thiel’s ‘Antichrist’ Obsession

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel wants to alert the world to an overlooked danger, said Nitasha Tiku in The Washington Post: the coming of the Antichrist. In a recent series of “off-the-record” lectures delivered in San Francisco to sold-out crowds, the venture capitalist and GOP megadonor warned that critics of technology, artificial intelligence, and financial innovation are “legionnaires of the Antichrist,” who could usher in the destruction of America “and an era of global totalitarian rule.” The modern version of the biblical Antichrist would be “a Luddite who wants to stop all science, it’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” he said, referring to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, who wants to prevent machines from achieving human-level intelligence. By calling for stricter global regulations, he claimed, these activists could help create a singular world government that the Antichrist would then use to control humanity. Thiel is a devout Christian and longtime libertarian; still, his words were striking in their “effort to cast resisting oversight of technology development as a religious battle.” Read Full Article »