Artificial intelligence has arrived and is stepping onto the world stage. The evidence is all around us, but the recent accomplishments of the AlhpaZero chess algorithm are driving it home.

AlphaZero has arisen as the new champion chess-playing computer program. What is significant about this program is not that it beat the previous champion (also a computer program), but that AlphaZero relied on strategizing whereas the previous champion used brute force calculating power. This is being hailed as a major step forward in the development of artificial intelligence.

DeepMind’s artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero is now showing signs of human-like intuition and creativity, in what developers have hailed as ‘turning point’ in history. Unlike the world’s best chess machine – Stockfish – which calculates millions of possible outcomes as it plays, AlphaZero learns from its past successes and failures … . It is the same way the human brain learns, adjusting tactics based on a previous win or loss, which allows it to search just 60 thousand positions per second, compared to the roughly 60 million of Stockfish. (Deep Mind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical turning-point for AI, Sarah Knapton, for The Telegraph, December 6, 2018)

Artificial Intelligence is probably one of the leading issues of the end times, as it will probably integrate with the Mark of the Beast of Revelation 13.

Revelation 13 first describes the beast itself. This is the Antichrist.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea … and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. … And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast … . And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God … . And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb … . (Revelation 13)

Next is the false prophet, apparently a Church leader who serves during the time of the Beast:

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. [And he] causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

This false prophet works miracles and leads the world into worship of an idol representing the Antichrist.

And he doeth great wonders … [a]nd deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles [saying] that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And here is the mark:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

If the time for fulfillment of these prophecies is drawing near, it is looking like the taking of the mark will be associated with access to an artificial intelligence deployed over the world wide web. The internet’s ability to gather information will combine with an increasing ability to garner a sense of who and what humanity is. If an artificial intelligence is linked with it, it can easily become the smartest and most influential mind on the planet. Combine that with existing wireless brainwave entrainment technology and you have a tool that can become an abiding presence in the minds of its users. It can add itself to the user’s five human senses, becoming a new trans-human sense. It would have the power to induce emotions as well as to inject thoughts.

If taking the Mark in the forehead is used to give access to this A.I. net, these users will mind meld with it and will have exchanged their personal freedom for “happiness,” “joy,” “fulfillment,” or whatever it will claim to be pumping out. They will have transcended the status of merely human, and by this augmentation will have become gods.

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