Countering the AI Revolution
Preserving the arc of humanity to seed a better future
by
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Already with only one full year into the AI Revolution, we have begun the process of divesting and delegating knowledge and truth and understanding to these machines rather than seeking and maintaining subject matter expertise within ourselves or seeking the direct companionship, wisdom, and knowledge of real human experts. We are in essence divesting ourselves into the machines in a sort of upside down reality as if we serve them. Indeed Elon Musk has indicated that is our very purpose as the so-called “bootloaders for AI.” That speaks volumes of Musk’s value of humanity. And another inherent danger of these machines is the assumptions we bring to them from our own mythology about them that has largely been crafted by books and movies for decades. People today already assume these LLMs are intelligent beings who are all knowing, all seeing, all wise, perfectly accurate, and beyond critique. This is why you often see people in social media invoking an AI agent to answer if a post or story is true, and to discern the meaning of stories, posts, and articles on their behalf. To teach them skills or even to perform them on our behalf without supervision. It is the hope of the AI Revolutionaries that we can take this experiment to the next level with modern compute capacity and the digitization of data and through an increasing scale of inputs so that these machines can “reason” beyond our capacity and consider what we cannot, and therefore do what has been impossible until this point. They believe that if they can build the perfect algorithms to guide the learning process of the machines, then they can break away from any of our cognitive limitations, beliefs, or biases, and finally get to the raw and full truth and optimal outcomes. They talk of things that will emerge from this new technology that will guide humanity into a new way of being. Indeed as demonstrated by Peter Thiel’s hesitation to the question posed by Ross Douthat during an interview for Interesting Times, it’s not clear whether or not these AI Revolutionaries even want humanity to continue. Elon Musk has hinted toward his preference as he has modified his vision of space travel from “humans will be an interplanetary species” to now “human consciousness will be interplanetary.” Indeed, the head of Google’s AI project is encouraging high school students to give up on their dreams of careers and to abandon higher education altogether, because as he sees the near future, in 4 years or less there won’t be any jobs to be had, except caring for the AI robots. This message is not being welcomed by our youth but is instead seeding in them despair and a spirit of futility. Rightfully so as they are being told the world is ending and a new unknown one that will replace it is yet to be and we have no real idea of what the pursuit of meaning will be like in that world in which all current human activity is ended. So now our problem is what we will do with these machines, what mythology we will bring to them, how much we will let them do on our behalf, and what will be the net impact that will have on all of us. It seems right now we are on a path of destroying the essence of humanity and building for us a new god that will work to replace us under the promise that it will make us gods. Looking back to the visionaries of the AI Revolution, the outcome doesn’t look good for humanity as it seems that none of these men are too keen on the continuation of humanity in our natural state and as Peter Thiel has put it, “we want to transform the totality of who you are” and as Elon Musk puts it, “humanity is the bootloader for AI,” and “probably none of us will have jobs.” So what will the meaning of life be if we overcome death, build machines that take care of all our needs, and after we have outsourced all creative, challenging, and expressive works to agents and bots? The Revolutionaries don’t exactly know, but they suspect we will have to figure it out when we get there. Until then, they promise us peace, provision, protection, prosperity, and entertainment. Given all that has happened in such a short period of time, this may seem radical in the retelling, but this is simply a summary of some of the key milestones and movements of the AI Revolution of 2025. What happens next changes everything.
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About the Book
Having used the foundational technology that powers the AI systems of today for decades in his professional work at the peak of Silicon Valley, Matt was as surprised as most by the suddenness of what has been dubbed the AI Revolution. Seemingly coming from nowhere, it was now everywhere – in everything, doing everything, changing everything. But unlike most people, Matt’s professional experience allowed him to view this emerging Revolution from the inside.His experience allowed him to cut through the surface noise and excitement of the new, to see deeper and darker transformations and deceptions at play. Right away he noticed that all was not as it seemed and that the technology was being repurposed by an ideology. Matt has dedicated years investigating this moment in human history from his front-row seat perspective within Silicon Valley, but as a Christian man first who seeks to understand all things according to the Christian worldview. In this work, he seeks to bring readers the truth of what he has discovered about the driving nature of the AI Revolution, from not only the people creating the technology, but also by understanding what influences them. In addition to that, Matt takes a critical look at how the AI Revolution directly confronts and tries to escape the arc of the human story: the essence of who we are, the values and traditions by which we have lived, the Christian story and the way of Christ that calls us out of darkness. He brings all of this analysis & experience together to provide perspectives on what AI is, what it isn’t, and how we as Christians should respond to the AI Revolution. His ultimate aim is to help preserve the arc of the human story and to seed the future with the essence of how life is supposed to be.
About the Author
Matt Johnston has worked professionally in Cyber Security for over 25 years. He has served at the very peak of modern computer technology in national defense contexts and among the enterprises that make up the Big Tech industry. In 2025, he and his wife, Chrissy, launched Practive Security to bring his decades of experience defending organizations from online threats, to the everyday context of life as a trusted Advisor to everyone outside of the Silicon Valley buddle. They seek to serve individuals, parents, families, and business owners in protecting what matters the most from the vast array of threats we encounter online. As a teen and young adult growing up in the church, Matt studied Christian theology and philosophy which provided him the foundation by which he has lived as a man, a husband, a father, and an employee. Matt and Chrissy reside in Lakeside, California along with their three daughters. As a homeschooling family, they are very active in the practical life of the church.