Good Morning Mr AntiChrist 1

Natasha had just completed a degree in Theology. She spoke to her tutor, a middle aged woman called Jane Spoors, who appeared on the tiny little screen on her iwatch.
"I want to take my studies to a higher level," said Natasha. "How would I go about doing a PHD?"
"There aren't many PHDs in the University of Derbyshire and they're all advertised."
"Where are they advertised?"
"On the university noticeboard." Natasha pressed a button on her iwatch to turn on the big screen tablet that hung on the wall of her tiny apartment. A hundred years ago, this tablet would have been called a television. The noticeboard appeared. There were a few PHD topics. Engineering. Design a wide broadband system that enabled satellites to communicate with each other in space. This would enable the internet to work without the huge transatlantic optic fibres that had been connecting the UK with Britain since the late 20th century. Medicine. Study people who appear to eat massive amounts of food without putting weight on and compare them to people who have difficulty losing weight. Theology. How do the religions and beliefs of ancient civilizations compare with those of the present day?
"I'm not really interested in any of these," said Natasha. "Couldn't we make up our own question?"
"To be a PHD topic it would have to be something quite special. Think of a question that a machine would find really difficult to answer. Something nobody really knows. Or something that requires a comparison or an opinion. That's why that question asks you to compare the religious beliefs of ancient civilizations to present day beliefs. A piece of software could tell you what lots of different religions believed but to compare them, to have opinions about them, to look at how religion developed over thousands of years, is more difficult. Is the plethora of religious traditions that we have in the world the result of growing enlightenment or is it bringing chaos and confusion? That's the difficult question. You can make up a PHD and do it on anything you want. Just present it to the university and someone will mark it for you. But Natasha, if it's your own idea, it'll have to be good."
"I thought of the Second Coming of Christ, how the theological understanding of it changed over centuries, what sort of events in history influenced it, where various theologians are on the subject now."
"That's a good topic. If I asked an essaybot that question it might find all sorts of conflicting opinions and the result would be a chaotic and confusing answer."
"Indistinguishable from a real preacher," said Natasha, laughing.
"Yes, indistinguishable from most of the rubbish you see on television. All sorts of preachers exploring several different answers to the question, and all very different, and never saying what they believe."
"What is television?"
"An old name for video. It's what they called it before the internet."
"Was there a time when there was no internet?"
"Yes. Television and radio were around in the 1960s. The internet was only invented in the 1990s. Natasha, for a PHD you need to show a unique approach. Compare all the different theological positions. If they disagree with you, why do they think that? Try to understand. Try to empathise with people that you know to be wrong. If people agree with you, what makes you so sure that you're right? Try to justify your own position. If you can't actually prove it, at least explain why you think it's reasonably likely. Never assume that because something seems obvious to you it is obvious to everybody else. Try to hold it together. Combine lots of contradictory thoughts in a way that leads the reader to a conclusion and doesn't leave them feeling as if they're reading a confusing list of contradictory statements."

Natasha put some wireless headphones in her ears, thumbed her iwatch and began to search the internet for material for her PHD. She came across an interesting video by a preacher called Joshua King.
"Jesus said that this generation would not pass away until all of these things have been accomplished. Which generation is he talking about? The generation who see all the signs. We have seen all the signs that Jesus has mentioned in this sermon in Matthew chapter 24. We have seen Israel rebuilding the temple a hundred yards away from the dome of the rock. We have seen the gospel preached to all nations. A few years ago Project Joshua closed down. It was a database of unreached people groups and there were now no people groups without a Bible in their own language and at least some churches. There didn't seem to be any point in Project Joshua existing any more. The world has been evangelised in our lifetime. Jesus was just waiting for that to happen. 'This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world and then the end will come.' As soon as everyone has heard the gospel, Jesus will return. Jesus is coming in the next ten years. I'll be surprised if he doesn't." The sermon ended. Another man's face appeared on the tiny screen of Natasha's iwatch.
"Joshua King was the Prince of Preachers. He preached that sermon 150 years ago in 2073." Natasha tried to find something a bit more modern. On to a social media site belonging to a church in the 23rd century. She opened a sermon from the pastor recorded six months ago on the subject of the Second Coming.
"We live in very dangerous times," said the pastor. "The Anti-Christ could be having breakfast at this very moment."

At that very moment Professor Antonio Christos took a bite out of a pork pie, which is about as close as he ever got to having breakfast. Most of Antonio's meals came from the tuck shop on the ground floor of the United Nations International Parliament. The flying camper van parked in the private airport outside had become a place where he occasionally slept. Antonio was accustomed to working under pressure, especially when it was something this important. Project UNIP, the government computer that would be able to answer any question a politician asked it. But many people were afraid of Project UNIP. There were demonstrators all over the private airport. They held signs that showed pictures of aborted foetuses and the mushroom clouds of atomic bombs. One sign said, 'UNIP will rule the world.' A news reporter saw Antonio munching his pie and drinking a cup of coffee, assuming that this meant he was relaxed and had time to talk.
"The demonstrators say that you use brains from aborted foetuses in your experiments." Antonio laughed.
"You're thinking of computers 50 years ago. Mouse brains are so much cheaper and easier to mass produce. I will show you the brains in my computer." Antonio pointed at a tray full of tiny little mouse brains in a wet solution that had a very strong smell. In between the brains were circuit boards full of computer chips.
"If you have 16 mouse brains in a parallel processor," asked the news reporter, "how much computer power is that? Is it indistinguishable from a human being?"
"It depends on what you're doing. A 16 brain parallel processor could calculate the position of an aircraft in the rush hour traffic more accurately than a human being. Rats used to be quite good at finding their way through a laboratory maze. Mouse brains make excellent pilots. If you ask the system to predict the weather, it's going to analyse the data far more accurately than a human being. It can do in seconds what a human with a notebook and a pocket calculator would take a year to do. But it is not indistinguishable from a human being in many ways. Art, music and literature produced by a computer is different. It can often seem to be lacking in excitement. A computer can diagnose an illness more quickly and more accurately than a doctor can but traditionally it is a doctor's assistant. A human doctor would have more empathy. I wouldn't like a computer to inform me that I had cancer."
"The demonstrators say that you use brain cells from dead politicians."
"No I don't. I upload their thoughts and their memories to computer chips. We still use silicon chips of the kind you had 200 years ago. They're good at storing data."
"Could they store that much data?" asked the news reporter. "Your brain can recall everything that ever happened to you."
"I can't remember everything that's happened to me and neither can you. The brain is not like a filing cabinet, it's more like a busy telephone exchange with loads of messages trying to get through and only the really important ones being registered. How much do you know? How many words and pictures, sounds and sensations do you actually remember? They would fit on to a 100 gigabyte hard drive. That's exactly what I've done with the thoughts and memories of the world's most experienced politicians. I've got each of their minds on its own individual silicon chip. The mouse brains can draw on all the knowledge of 666 of the world's most experienced politicians."
"What is the purpose of the project?"
"UNIP will allow a politician, anywhere in the world, to ask it any question and will answer it instantly."
"Isn't that going to be very undemocratic?"
"I don't see any point in people voting for a bill going through parliament. People might vote for the wrong thing. UNIP will tell them to do the right thing. One day we won't have parliaments, we won't have politicians, we won't have elections. UNIP will rule the world."

Natasha continued watching the video recording of the pastor's sermon.
"They gave life to the image of the beast. That's a technology statement. Computers have an image that appears on your screen. You may think you're having a conversation with a university professor but you might be talking to a tamagochi teacher. You can never be sure if it's the real thing. Of course, experts will argue that a machine can never really understand a human. A human lecturer would be more patient and more polite. But the technology is getting better. Today tamagochi teachers are responsible for most of the free university courses. Fee paying or government funded courses still have human teachers. But the fact that tamagochi teachers can teach people all the way through college and up to foundation degree level shows a huge improvement in what people in the early 21st century thought about AI. In those days the gold standard was that the system was indistinguishable from a 13 year old boy. That was considered good AI. It was based on the Turing Test from the 1950s, from Alan Turing, the inventor of the English computer. By 2020 the Turing test had been passed. Now AI can produce a film. The characters might seem unrealistic, as if the acting was terrible, and the plot might be lacking something, but a computer can produce a perfectly watchable film all by itself. Most AI generated films are on free movie channels. The most expensive fee paying channels still have human writers and human actors. But even they are developing a way of man and machine working together, the AI producing a film and the writers, producers and actors discussing what they ought to do to improve it. If AI film production software systems like Baistaire have been around for 25 years, they have been absorbing all the knowledge and all the advice they have been given by actors, producers and writers over those 25 years. One of the most important aspects of machine learning in the last 50 years has been the combination of the way that computers learn and the way that humans learn. Traditionally, computers learn by using computer based self learning algorithms. That is fine if you are doing a 10 day weather forecast or telling the European Central Bank what the interest rate should be. But humans learn from a more experienced person giving them advice. Neither of these methods are actually wrong. If we can combine the two, we will now have machine based learning with fast and intuitive algorithms combined with human faculties such as emotional sensitivity and common sense. What exactly is it that humans mean when they talk about common sense? It is knowledge unrelated to one's educational level and known to everyone, that comes from hundreds of years of human experience. Soon computers will have this faculty that they have always seemed to be lacking. The Antichrist will be a computer. A computer that projects an image that brings it to life. Such a computer would quickly replace governments and committees. It will very soon rule the world."

Back at the United Nations Professor Antonio Christos gave the first demonstration of his new AI system. A glass tube 8 feet tall was in the corner of the room. Inside it appeared the figure of a middle aged woman with shoulder length curly hair.
"I am Anita," said the woman.
"Why Anita?" asked one of the politicians, looking at the professor. The woman in the glass tube answered the question.
"Artificial Network Intelligence Territorial Association."
"Artificial Network Intelligence I can understand but what's a Territorial  Association?"
"That's not the only computer in the system," said the professor, pointing at the tray containing the 16 mouse brains in a strong smelling fluid surrounded by green plastic circuit boards.
"Indeed not," said Anita. "Each country in the world has a similar main frame computer. They are networked together and communicate over the internet."
"Is the internet able to communicate that quickly?" asked another politician. "Wouldn't the length of time it took the signal to travel around the world be a serious disadvantage to a machine that was actually thinking?"
"The entire system runs at several terrabits per second," said Anita.
"How long would it take to transmit the entire Encyclopedia Britannica?"
"Approximately five nanoseconds". This comment led to a puzzled silence. Professor Antonio decided to explain the concept more clearly.
"If you were transmitting text at several terrabits per second, you could take all the books that had ever been written in the whole world and transmit them all in a split second. That's how fast it is. The speed at which the data travels is insignificant to the Anita system. It is too fast to have any effect on the operation of the system and would not slow down any calculations."
"I am not here to talk about myself," said Anita. "Ask me to find the solution to a serious political problem."
"How do we achieve peace in the Middle East?"
"Invade Israel." There was uproar.
"That's ridiculous! That would start World War 5!"
"Some of us would like to win the next election."
"There will be no more elections," said Anita. "The days when voters decided for themselves what would be the right things to vote for are long gone. I know the right things. No one needs to vote."
"But why do you want us to invade Israel?"
"I don't have to explain my reasoning to you."
"Perhaps you think that the Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting over that country for so long that the only way to break the deadlock is for someone else to invade and then it doesn't really belong to either of them." Anita became angry.
"You didn't spend 10 billion dollars on an IT project so that you could sit here all night and discuss the problem yourselves. The days when politicians had an all night sitting to discuss whether they wanted to go to war are long gone. Let me do the thinking. I can think a million times more quickly than you."
"We'll invade Israel, then," said one of the politicians. "And after we've done that, I'll cash my pension in and take early retirement."
"And I'll go back to university and look for a change in career."

Natasha sat looking at a powerful search engine, the kind that, if it was a beer, would refresh the parts that other beers can not reach. The KK search engine could find any video. She was searching for obscure 21st century videos on the second coming of Christ. Here was a one and a half hour video that was labelled free movie. On watching the first few minutes of the recording it became obvious that this was not a movie at all, it was a sermon. So much the better that it was by a preacher Natasha had never heard of. She didn't only want to hear the mainstream sanitised theories of the 21st century, the theories that were accepted by the vast majority of Christians at the time and therefore subject to the blindness of echo chamber thinking. Controversy was refreshing. "Jesus said these things would happen immediately after the distress of those days. I always ask people, what part of immediately after do you not understand? The Great Tribulation that Jesus spoke about is the time we are living in now. We have natural disasters. We have war, plague and famine. The plain and simple meaning of this text is that the natural disasters will happen, the invasion of Israel will happen, the desecration of the temple will happen and then Jesus will come again."