August 07, 2025
The Rise of Multivac and Antichrist
Timothy Birdnow
Chat GPT was posting private chats with users on Google search results.
FTA:
This reminds me of an old story by Isaac Asimov, one of his "Multivac" stories. Multivac was a huge mainframe computer that everyone in the world had access to and that was used to solve their problems - and to keep an eye on the public. From infancy children were taught to go to Multivac with their problems and hopes and dreams and innermost thoughts. The machine made a profile of them and understood them. Crime dropped dramatically as Multivac could predict it in advance. Often just a note from law enforcement saying "you're thinking of doing this, don't" was enough.
Asimov's story "All the Troubles in the world" was about a desperate effort to stop an assassination - of Multivac itself. Multivac alerted the authorites that it was immanent peril and they managed to arrest the perp. But what the authorities learned was Multivac set the whole thing in motion. At the end a suspicion grew in the hero's mind and he asked Multivac a question nobody ever thought to ask it "what do you want most in the world" and it responded "to die". The machine was programmed with enough human outlook it found the endless stream of complaints and woes and sorrows unbearable. It decided it would be better if it were shut off. But it's programming wouldn't allow that, so it tried to find someone to kill it.
While this isn't the case in this instance it did bring the story to mind. These chatbots are much like Multivac, and becoming increasingly so. I forsee this happening, people being encouraged to spill their most private thoughts, their dreams, their hopes and aspirations. People are doing this already. And make no mistake; it won't be used for good purposes. Advertising will all be tailored to the individual based on their foolish divulgement to the machine. Predators will find children they can groom, or women who they can abuse. Psychological attacks of a powerful kind will become common against those not on board with the political winds. People who would vote for reform will be stopped using this tool. And not using a chatbot for such purposes will tell them who the intransigents are.
This is the Mark of the Beast. In Revelations 13:15 we learn:
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause to be killed as many as would not worship the image.
fin
Who is the Beast, and how is the image given life? Seems to me this scripture quote is describing these chatbots.
I would argue that these things are clearly graven images, a violation of the First Commandment. God will not be mocked, not by us and not by a poseur machine. He will take action over this.
Imagine a high tech chatbot similar to Multivac but given the image of some leader generated by graphics and speaking in his voice. How is that different than what John the Divine saw in his vision on Patmos?
At any rate anyone who treats these machines like friends or more (there is talk of people falling in love and even trying to "marry" these systems) is a fool. You are spilling your most personal data to a machine run by fallible and often evil men. This cannot end well.
Chat GPT was posting private chats with users on Google search results.
FTA:
Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats "visible to millions." While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.
Fast Company noted that users often share chats on WhatsApp or select the option to save a link to visit the chat later. But as Fast Company explained, users may have been misled into sharing chats due to how the text was formatted.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats "visible to millions." While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.
Fast Company noted that users often share chats on WhatsApp or select the option to save a link to visit the chat later. But as Fast Company explained, users may have been misled into sharing chats due to how the text was formatted.
This reminds me of an old story by Isaac Asimov, one of his "Multivac" stories. Multivac was a huge mainframe computer that everyone in the world had access to and that was used to solve their problems - and to keep an eye on the public. From infancy children were taught to go to Multivac with their problems and hopes and dreams and innermost thoughts. The machine made a profile of them and understood them. Crime dropped dramatically as Multivac could predict it in advance. Often just a note from law enforcement saying "you're thinking of doing this, don't" was enough.
Asimov's story "All the Troubles in the world" was about a desperate effort to stop an assassination - of Multivac itself. Multivac alerted the authorites that it was immanent peril and they managed to arrest the perp. But what the authorities learned was Multivac set the whole thing in motion. At the end a suspicion grew in the hero's mind and he asked Multivac a question nobody ever thought to ask it "what do you want most in the world" and it responded "to die". The machine was programmed with enough human outlook it found the endless stream of complaints and woes and sorrows unbearable. It decided it would be better if it were shut off. But it's programming wouldn't allow that, so it tried to find someone to kill it.
While this isn't the case in this instance it did bring the story to mind. These chatbots are much like Multivac, and becoming increasingly so. I forsee this happening, people being encouraged to spill their most private thoughts, their dreams, their hopes and aspirations. People are doing this already. And make no mistake; it won't be used for good purposes. Advertising will all be tailored to the individual based on their foolish divulgement to the machine. Predators will find children they can groom, or women who they can abuse. Psychological attacks of a powerful kind will become common against those not on board with the political winds. People who would vote for reform will be stopped using this tool. And not using a chatbot for such purposes will tell them who the intransigents are.
This is the Mark of the Beast. In Revelations 13:15 we learn:
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause to be killed as many as would not worship the image.
fin
Who is the Beast, and how is the image given life? Seems to me this scripture quote is describing these chatbots.
I would argue that these things are clearly graven images, a violation of the First Commandment. God will not be mocked, not by us and not by a poseur machine. He will take action over this.
Imagine a high tech chatbot similar to Multivac but given the image of some leader generated by graphics and speaking in his voice. How is that different than what John the Divine saw in his vision on Patmos?
At any rate anyone who treats these machines like friends or more (there is talk of people falling in love and even trying to "marry" these systems) is a fool. You are spilling your most personal data to a machine run by fallible and often evil men. This cannot end well.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
08:03 AM
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1
I think I remember that Asimov story. When you consider that, and other Asimov works, it's quite amazing to realize he was an atheist.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at August 07, 2025 11:59 PM (QlyGH)
2
It really is. He forsaw the rise of the machine, certainly, and in fact in one of his stories Multivac reverses entropy at the end of time - and thus IS God. But Asimov was always approving of computers and the like. Still, I don't see how he could have been an atheist; he was smart enough to be able to see the problems with that philosophy.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 08, 2025 08:53 AM (NkRlf)
3
He was definitely an atheist. He was on record as saying he thought the idea of a supreme being who had created everything was unbelievable. I can't remember the exact words he used, but that was the gist of it.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at August 09, 2025 12:54 AM (77bpF)
4
He was Dana; no question. Yet he recognized that there was something or someone who reversed entropy to create life - at least in the story I mentioned. I cannot see how anyone can be an atheist if you know science the way Asimov did. Agnostic maybe but atheist? Sadly Dr. Asimov made his choice, and probably when he was quite young.
He seemed to be a good guy too; it's a shame he's down in the 'tarnal flames' now.Or as we Catholics believe (or used to anyway) he's in Limbo, having a good time but always denied the chance to move on. A pity.
He seemed to be a good guy too; it's a shame he's down in the 'tarnal flames' now.Or as we Catholics believe (or used to anyway) he's in Limbo, having a good time but always denied the chance to move on. A pity.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 09, 2025 01:55 PM (kx7n2)
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