Global AI treaty won’t stop tech-worshippers from pursuing the posthuman era

As international organizations expend greater and greater effort in attempting to regulate artificial intelligence according to the “shared values” of the “international community,” Christians must realize they cannot trust such organizations to deter the true dangers of AI.

This is because these so-called “shared values” are not shared by Christians, and because such international treaties do nothing to stop the religious ambitions of the tech-worshippers of Silicon Valley.

On Thursday, the “Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law” was opened for signature, and was signed by Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and others.

The document emphasizes the “need to establish, as a matter of priority, a globally applicable legal framework setting out common general principles and rules governing the activities within the lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems that effectively preserves shared values and harnesses the benefits of artificial intelligence for the promotion of these values…”

Yet what are these “shared values” which the Council hopes to preserve and promote via AI?

Unsurprisingly, they include all the well-known anti-family, anti-Christian values which leftist cultural revolutionaries have been pushing for decades through similar international organizations and their many partners.

One particularly extreme example of the “shared values” that the Council of Europe embraces is its open support of the Yogyakarta Principles.

In addition to opposing the sanctity of marriage and Christian teaching on men and women, the Yogyakarta Principles state that children have the right to “autonomy and self-determination,” and thus that chemical and surgical “modifications to their sex characteristics” to accord with the “child’s views” can be “consented to by the child.”

A 2009 paper from the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights recommends that member states “make gender reassignment procedures, such as hormone treatment, surgery and psychological support, accessible for transgender persons, and ensure that they are reimbursed by public health insurance schemes.”

An additional example of the Council of Europe’s radical values is its stance on abortion.

In a document published earlier this year, the Council of Europe expressed support for women’s “right” to end the lives of their children at any stage of their development in the womb, recommending that nations “repeal laws and regulations that…prohibit abortion based on gestational limits.”

As AI is increasingly used to curate and disseminate the information which the world consumes daily, and much of Christian ethics (particularly Christian sexual ethics) has been rejected as hateful and discriminatory by a large portion of the creators and regulators of AI, it is not difficult to see that AI will be used to suppress Christian teaching at an international level.

Yet beyond the threat posed by the use of AI in the information domain, Christians ought also to be aware of the misplaced religious longings which motivate many of the most prominent AI developers.

As I have written about previously, many prominent leaders in Silicon Valley believe that the artificial general intelligence (AGI) they seek to develop will constitute a new species of life, will transcend human intelligence, and will bring us into the “posthuman era.”

They believe evolution is moving towards “the technological singularity,” after which humanity will likely no longer be the dominant force on the planet.

Some in fact believe that there is no reason to value a human life over the “life” of such a sufficiently advanced AGI—that valuing human beings over AGIs is “speciesist,” as Google co-founder Larry Page once told Elon Musk.

While the Council of Europe’s new global AI treaty claims to protect “human rights,” it does nothing to deter these Silicon Valley leaders from continuing their mad quest to conjure digital gods, obtain technological salvation, and bring us into the posthuman era.