A leading persecution watchdog is warning that repressive governments are escalating their use of artificial intelligence to target believers.
President of Global Christian Relief David Curry told Faithwire that he has a prime suspect in mind.
“The example that pops out that is a clear and present danger is China and their use of artificial intelligence to monitor the movement of their population. They have a social scoring system which tracks church attendance and can prohibit children under the age of 18 from going to church or, if it can’t prohibit it, it will certainly punish you in your social score,” he observed.
“What we’re trying to raise the alarm on is the effects that will grow as more and more of these artificial intelligence technologies come online and the way in which the biases and assumptions that are built into this predictive modelling could affect religious faith.” Mr. Curry explained.
“We’re focused right now on the persecution of Christians, the monitoring of Christian activity, the censorship of worship services, pastors posting of videos — all the various implications of artificial intelligence.”
One of Mr. Curry’s biggest concerns is the use of deep fakes or videos that purport to show actions or infractions that never actually unfolded. He told Faithwire he’s nervous such videos — increasingly made to look believable with AI — could create unique threats for the persecuted church.
“Blasphemy accusations or mob violence by extremists against Christians are not based on an actual event that happened, but on word of mouth. There are some really pernicious and difficult angles on this as we look forward to what could be done with deep fakes.”
Mr. Curry is also worried by the growing use of autonomous weapon systems by terrorists, especially in Nigeria and other African nations where they are used to cut off communities from cellphones and other technology before attacking them.
He explained the AI weapon systems are “made to identify threats, and the weapon makes a decision on its own on how and when to attack.”
The Global Christian Relief chief also expressed fears for the censorship of any expression of Biblical values on social media which could lead to outright bans.
“Obviously, there’s a role for government in passing laws which protect religious experience from these kinds of attacks of artificial intelligence,” he said, while noting that some repressive states like China are already blocking and circumventing such protections.
Faithwire reports Mr. Curry called on Christians to ponder the creation of platforms from which believers “cannot be banned” and where they can “speak openly” and practice faith “peacefully.”
“We have to be clear that the basic Biblical story is a challenge to the culture now and I think that’s going to be banned on public platforms in the not-too-distant future. There needs to be a wave of pressure from people of faith about raising this flag with your representatives.”
He warned that Christianity’s opponents will use all of the censorship, all of the programming assumptions of artificial intelligence, and even predictive policing and weaponry that will make these decisions in the near future. We’re not looking at a far horizon. I think in the next five to 10 years, you’re going to see this escalate to be maybe the issue of our time.”
