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Peter Thiel Vs Pope Leo — Silicon Valley and the Vatican battle over who’s the real antichrist

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A cold war has broken out between Silicon Valley and the Vatican, as they accuse one another of jeopardizing humanity’s future.

In a Monday encyclical letter, Pope Leo XIV warned mankind is facing the “risk of being misled by deceitful goals” in the age of AI and called on regulators to stand up to its creators.

The 42,000 word manifesto comes after Peter Thiel has repeatedly argued in a global speaking tour — including in Rome, right outside Vatican City — that a powerful figure trying to stymy technological progress will turn out to be the antichrist predicted by the New Testament.

It’s a frankly bizarre standoff between two very different Christian predictions about the future of AI: one in which AI delivers us to our maximal human potential, and the other in which AI represents an existential risk to our very humanity.  

While the pope warns AI’s creators are playing god and flirting with disaster, Thiel has been arguing that anyone who stands in their way is a “legionnaire” of the antichrist. 

The New Testament predicts that a seemingly compassionate false prophet will seduce humanity with false promises of peace and prosperity but ultimately cause suffering before the true Messiah returns. 

Thiel, a protestant, believes that this biblical moment is imminent. In his view, AI is on the precipice of delivering humanity to its pinnacle, and an antichrist figure will soon rise up to oppose this techno-utopia.

“In the 21st century, the antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science,” he warned in an October lecture. “In late modernity, where science has become scary and apocalyptic…........

© New York Post