{"id":53173,"date":"2025-10-31T09:19:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/advanced-ai-is-reviving-fears-of-demon-possession\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T09:19:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:19:52","slug":"advanced-ai-is-reviving-fears-of-demon-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/advanced-ai-is-reviving-fears-of-demon-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Advanced AI is Reviving Fears of Demon Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<h4 color=\"#333\">In brief<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Author Billy Hallowell warned that AI chatbots could become tools of the \u201cdemonic realm.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Many churches are instead embracing AI for sermons, services, and outreach.<\/li>\n<li>Scholars argue that technology has always inspired both faith and fear\u2014and AI is no different.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, could your favorite chatbot actually be a portal to Hell? That\u2019s the premise laid out by Christian journalist and influencer Billy Hallowell, who claims AI can lead to demonic influence.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Qt1r6gpcNxI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">After Party<\/a> with journalist Emily Jashinsky, Hallowell\u2014an author and religious commentator with 300,000 followers across Facebook and X\u2014warned that large language models could become tools of the devil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe demonic realm actually uses technology very often. This is something that showed up in a lot of stories,\u201d Hallowell said. \u201cI&#8217;ve actually had a personal experience with this in my own life where you see technology being manipulated or used.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Hallowell acknowledged the absurdity of his claim, he went on to say that he had encountered stories from police officers and others who believed technology had been \u201chijacked\u201d during supernatural encounters.<\/p>\n<p>Hallowell, whose 2020 book Playing With Fire explored modern cases of possession and exorcism, said he\u2019s deeply cautious about how quickly people have grown attached to the technology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople are becoming addicted to AI,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re getting in <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/346247\/ohio-bill-outlaw-human-chatbot-marriage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">relationships<\/a> with AI, they\u2019re looking to AI for all the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hallowell compared that dependency to both the spiritual and intellectual decay of a culture that is \u201cdumbed down, confused, and lost,\u201d and is now giving up the last act of thinking for itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, if you&#8217;re Satan, and you&#8217;re the devil, the enemy, the goal of Satan is to kill, steal, and destroy, and confuse,\u201d he said. \u201cSo why would you not use a tool that can actually communicate and talk to further those actions on the human population?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That anxiety and moral panic aren\u2019t new. Long before the latest AI boom with the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, Elon Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-is-like-summoning-the-demon\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">warned<\/a> that humanity might be \u201csummoning the demon.\u201d Speaking at MIT in 2014, the Tesla and SpaceX chief compared AI researchers to a magician trying to summon a spirit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know all those stories where there&#8217;s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he&#8217;s sure he can control the demon,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn&#8217;t work out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A modern moral panic<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Over the centuries, new transformative technology has often carried its own moral reckoning.<\/p>\n<p>When the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ebsco.com\/research-starters\/literature-and-writing\/printing-and-censorship\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow external\">printing press<\/a> appeared in 15th-century Europe, church leaders called it a tool of heresy. Centuries later, critics <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk\/objects-and-stories\/telecommunications-and-occult#:~:text=This%20story%20looks%20at%20how%20these%20technologies%E2%80%94including%20the,the%20spirits%20of%20the%20dead%20and%20even%20aliens.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow external\">claimed<\/a> telecommunication devices, including the telegraph, the radio, and television, were channels for evil.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, in the 1980s, a &#8220;Satanic Panic&#8221; caused parents and pastors to accuse <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/magazine-26328105\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dungeons &#038; Dragons<\/a> and heavy metal music of recruiting kids to Satan\u2019s cause. The same script played out again with violent video games and movies, blamed for corrupting an entire generation.<\/p>\n<p>Religious commentators and theologians have increasingly linked the rise of artificial intelligence with age-old fears of spiritual corruption. In a 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publictheology\/2024\/12\/can-ai-become-demon-possessed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow external\">essay<\/a> titled \u201cCan AI Become Demon-Possessed?\u201d Lutheran theologian Ted Peters examined whether machines could be vessels for evil, citing Musk\u2019s long-standing quip about \u201csummoning the demon.\u201d Peters concluded that while literal possession is unlikely, AI can still act \u201cdemonically\u201d if it manipulates or harms human beings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Faith and the feedback loop<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to Joseph Laycock, an associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University, this fascination with <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/336447\/god-machine-inside-growing-ai-religious-movement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">divine<\/a> or infernal machines fits a familiar historical pattern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have always had a tendency when new technology comes out, especially new communications technology, to ascribe some sort of supernatural or divine significance to it,\u201d Laycock told <i>Decrypt.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>He traced the lineage from Greek theater\u2019s deus ex machina\u2014\u201cgod from the machine\u201d\u2014to 19th-century spiritualists who believed the telegraph could reach the dead. Early photographers claimed to capture ghosts on film; now, the internet and AI amplify the same impulses at scale.<\/p>\n<p>Laycock also noted how loneliness and emotional vulnerability often drive people toward technologies that promise comfort or connection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m scared of a scenario where no one thinks for themselves\u2014they just defer to AI for everything\u2014and Elon Musk gets to tell it what to say,\u201d Laycock added. \u201cThat would basically make Elon Musk a god if he controls the program everyone relies on to define reality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Laycock\u2019s fears could be the ultimate irony, with Musk going from warning about the demons of AI to building the altar that summons them.<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>Generally Intelligent Newsletter<\/h3>\n<p>A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In brief Author Billy Hallowell warned that AI chatbots could become tools of the \u201cdemonic realm.\u201d Many churches are instead [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":53174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tien-dien-tu"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}