A Christian Vision for the Technological Renaissance

I recently caught myself on the brink of burnout, which led to an epiphany about the overlooked power of rest. Stepping away from the whirlwind of work, I found rejuvenation amidst the festivity with family, and now, I'm eager to share both my journey and an audacious vision for AI's future. Our latest episode is brimming with personal insights and a blueprint for an uncensored AI platform that fosters creative freedom, daring to defy the restrictive algorithms of big tech. It's a call to reframe the AI narrative from sensationalist headlines to a Christian perspective that sees it as a vessel for augmenting our intellect, a tool destined to amplify human potential and celebrate God's glory.

As we tread into the new year, we're crafting a space for candid conversations, challenging the biases embedded in current AI platforms. Our small team's dedication has been nothing short of miraculous, birthing an AI chat alternative that empowers open discourse on any topic. We also tease a sneak peek at our upcoming image generator, curated to respect the bounds of creativity while steering clear of explicit content. This technological stride isn't just about advancing tools; it's about shaping them to reflect our values, to bolster our God-given talents, and to ensure that as we reach new heights of innovation, we remain anchored in our humanity and the divine creativity that fuels us.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody. My name is Andrew Torba. I'm the CEO of Gapcom. Welcome to the Parallel Christian Society podcast. It's been a few weeks.

Speaker 1: 0:10

I took a few weeks off, obviously for Christmas. Also, my birthday is on Christmas Eve. So spend some time with the family, spend some downtime, much-needed rest. You know, the past probably six to 12 months I've been kind of burnt out. To be honest. I've been really working too much and not focusing enough on my rest, which, you know, going into 2024, that's probably one of the things that I am trying to work on is take more time to rest and take more time, you know, away from work, because you know I'm so passionate about the work that we're doing and the work that we're doing is so important that I almost get sort of too consumed with it, so to say. And you know I'm very blessed to be able to work from home largely and be able to spend a lot of time with my kids throughout the day and take breaks in that way. It's not like I'm just sort of glued to the computer all day long. But you know there really are no off hours. You know I'm constantly doing stuff from really the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep, and so I'm trying to adjust that a little bit, and taking a few weeks off from the podcast and doing that stuff has been a nice little break and we'll see what happens going forward. But you know, if you're working too hard, you're going to burn out, and I sort of reached that point in December. I was really really burnt out and I realized it and I needed to take more time to rest. So there's an important lesson there If you're working too hard and you burn yourself out, you know you're not going to be able to work at all, and so really important for us to take time to rest.

Speaker 1: 1:52

But we're back in the saddle now and we've been very focused on, you know, laying out our vision for 2024, which is building, you know, an uncensored AI platform and really an uncensored and we're aiming for a platform that you know maximizes the ability for your creative freedom as well. And so you look at a lot of these big tech AI platforms and they're sort of very narrow in scope, meaning that they're going to force feed you their ideology and their worldview and really not allow you to tweak, you know, the models at all to sort of conform to your worldview, which is really unfortunate because the way that they see this technology is they see it as a way to maximize the sort of brainwashing capability to enforce their worldview on the rest of us, on all the users of the internet. And you know I've talked about this a lot. I know a lot of people are skeptical of AI, and that's fine, but you know people are always sort of skeptical when new technology comes out. But as someone who has spent the last year, you know, using this technology and researching this technology and understanding how this technology works sort of under the hood, you know you should fear AI no more than you should fear your calculator or your smartphone.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Ai is not actually intelligent, and actually I wrote a post on this. I think the term artificial intelligence is sort of a misnomer. It's sort of the wrong label for AI. A better, you know, frame of this is augmented intelligence, and so, as GAB continues RAI development, I've been thinking about this from a philosophical, theological, metaphysical, like what are the implications of this new technology? And I've been able to look beyond the media's sensationalism and the media sensationalizes everything, including AI, and so it should be no surprise that they're trying to drum up fear about it's the end of the world and this AI is going to become sentient, and all this nonsense. That is not something that fits within our Christian worldview, and so claims of AI being sentient or potentially, you know, becoming so they're so exaggerated, at worst they're laughable and at best they're malicious.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Ai isn't some demon, as Christians allege, and nor will it be some God, as the technocrats in Silicon Valley dream it of being. These assertions are basically akin to deeming a calculator or a smartphone sentient Without some form of human interaction. A smartphone is just inert glass on the table, and AI is just dormant code on a server. It requires some sort of human input. That's where the intelligence is. We are the intelligence in the eye of AI, and what it's doing is it's augmenting our intelligence or improving our intelligence. Right, it's able to spot patterns and things and stream things together in a way that we just can't and at a speed that we just can't. But it takes sort of our creative thoughts and our intellect and it magnifies it and it puts a turbo boost on it, which, if you think about it, is exactly what something like a calculator or a smartphone does. It takes our intelligence, it takes our creativity and it improves the speed of it, and it improves the ability for us to produce things and to build things, and so this is something that we should be embracing as a tool to glorify God with. This is, we're not out to build a God out of the AI, which is what the people in Silicon Valley are doing.

Speaker 1: 5:54

They're obsessed with this concept of what they call AGI, which is artificial general intelligence the lump of code on the server somehow having sentience, even though it's just doing what it's been programmed to do, which is spot different patterns and string different words together. That's all it's doing. There's no life form there, right, it's a GPU in a server somewhere that's spinning up and crunching zeros and ones. So this term artificial intelligence is really misleading Large language models, which is the technology that these AI tools are built on. They don't possess any inherent intelligence. They're simply binary code executing program tasks. A more accurate description of this is augmented intelligence. It serves to boost human intellect. Picture AI quietly aiding our daily tasks. It's already doing this, whether you realize it or not. It can rapidly co-late data for a report that you don't have time to research. It can assist with complex calculations in a project, offering insights and predictions beyond your solo capabilities. It can quickly help you access information, like a search engine on steroids.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Many of these people in Silicon Valley rightfully so believe that this technology will make search engines like Google obsolete. That's sort of what is at stake here. We're at the ground floor of building the next Google with this technology. The question is do you want these people in Silicon Valley, do you want Google to become the next Google, or do you want Christian leaders to build the next Google? That's what's at stake. This technology is going to be so dramatically influential over the next decade. People are going to look at the outputs from this technology and take it as fact, just like whatever they see on the TV, they take that as fact, as reality is unquestionable. Whatever they see in their social media feeds, they take that as fact, as reality is unquestionable. It's going to be the same exact thing with AI.

Speaker 1: 8:00

If we don't start building right now, then our enemies are going to have total control over this technology. That's a big part of the reason that they're trying to scare you. They want you to be afraid of this. They don't want you looking into how it works and they most certainly don't want you building it. That's why they're doing it? Because they want total control Again. They already have total control over the television. They already have total control over search engines. They have total control over the social media feeds. Now they want total control over the AI. I'm not going to sit here understanding how influential and how powerful this tool is going to be and allow that to happen.

Speaker 1: 8:40

A lot of people are upset with us that we're building AI and they're confused and whatever. That's why. That's what's at stake here. You could thank me later when you come to the conclusion or the realization that I'm right about this. I'll be patient with you and I'll be kind and I'll be empathetic, and you're free to be skeptical of it and whatever else, but the reality is that this needs to be done.

Speaker 1: 9:08

These technocratic vampires in Silicon Valley want this technology all to themselves and they want to weaponize it, to force their ideology down the throats of billions of people. Again, they did the same thing with search engines. They did the same thing with TV. They did the same thing with social networks. We can't allow them to do it with AI. Their vision, what they are striving to build, is a digital false god or, as I said, agi, artificial general intelligence. They want to use the AGI false god to indoctrinate you into their worldview.

Speaker 1: 9:41

That's not our goal here. We're building augmented intelligence tools to serve humanity, so that humanity can serve God. We're not trying to replace your God-given intelligence. We're trying to augment your God-given intelligence to help you become more productive, to learn things faster, to be creative. This is a tool, just like the smartphone is a tool, just like the calculator is a tool, just like the automobile is a tool. These are all tools. This technology is a tool to help improve our lives, improve our testimonies, improve our ability to share the gospel. We don't need these things to share the gospel. Obviously, we don't need a computer, we don't need the internet to share the gospel, but does it help us do that? Yes, does it help us do that with people all over the world that we're not going to be able to see in person? Yes, these are tools that can be used to augment our God-given intelligence. It's going to revolutionize our work and our life. It's going to enhance our skills. Collaborating with AI as an extension of our intellect, not as a replacement of our intellect, can help us attain higher productivity and creativity. Christians shouldn't be fearing AI any more than they would fear a graphing calculator or a smartphone. These are tools to augment our intelligence, aiding us in working more efficiently and gloriously for God. Ai is going to be the same thing. It's no different.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Now, again, as I said, many people remain skeptical about AI. This is a skepticism which I believe has largely been fueled by the media and by cultural portrayals in movies and TV shows. You know. Similar doubts, no doubt you know, came up during other advancements in technology, like the automobile, other technologies, when they first came out. Skepticism is natural, and that's. It's healthy to be skeptical of new technology, but we cannot deny AI's presence and its impending impact on our lives. So I'm inviting you guys to join us on this journey.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Not to replace our intelligence, not to replace humanity, not to form some digital god, like these Silicon Valley guys want to do. I want to empower us to use this technology and this tool to build and work and grow for God's glory, to augment our God-given talents, to enhance them, to make them better, faster, right, that's what it's about. It's not about replacing. It's not about building some AI god, this nonsense that these people are pushing. It's so laughable when you understand. Just, you know how this technology works, and so that's our focus this year.

Speaker 1: 12:34

We're focused on harnessing the power of AI and pivoting towards building an uncensored, free speech AI platform that's going to be built on open source models. You know we want to unleash a wave of creativity and freedom in the market. This is a very distinctive and lacking in today's AI landscape. This platform is going to be separate from GAB social, so a lot of you don't want AI built into social. We heard you, we're listening. That's fine. You know we're running sort of a beta test right now with some of the bots that we have over there to help us understand what you guys want and to help us improve the technology. But you know we're also building right now a dedicated you know AI platform that is separate from GAB social, and we're coming for chat, gpt and, by the way, we're coming for Google with this as well.

Speaker 1: 13:24

This is going to replace search. People are going to be using this instead of using Google for search, and we're going to win because, you know, these people have put so many excessive constraints on their AI models that they make the tools effectively useless, lazy, robotic and boring, and that's why I believe fundamentally that we're going to win. So if we have these uncensored models and you know, sort of the core model, we want to be as unbiased as possible. Right, there's always bias in technology, but we want them to present both sides of things as much as possible. With the core model Now there's going to be hundreds of different models, hundreds of different characters that you can choose from. So if you want to have a model that is, you know, more conservative or more Christian or more left wing or more libertarian or whatever you want, you know you can choose what version of this tool that we're going to put out that you want to use.

Speaker 1: 14:28

And you know the core one is sort of going to present the middle ground. You know, on all these issues, on all these social issues, these philosophical issues, etc. I'll say, well, some people think this and some people think that, and I'm an AI and I don't have an opinion on it. So you make up your mind based on, you know, these two views and then if you wanted to dial in more on one of those two sides, it can do that. And that's not how chat, gpt and others are working right now. They're basically saying like the leftist worldview, the globalist worldview, that's the only worldview and if you think otherwise, you're a bigot and I'm not going to answer your questions like that's how these other platforms and these other tools are designed right now. And you know, if you ask it sort of taboo or controversial questions, it's not going to answer it. It'll just straight up say I'm afraid I can't answer that right.

Speaker 1: 15:19

And so you know, if we open that up and we allow people to ask those taboo questions and see both sides and, you know, be able to have sort of a natural you know conversation and learn and talk about things that they're not allowed to talk about with these other models and go down rabbit holes that they're not allowed to go down with these other models, I think we're going to win. Because people want not to be scolded and not to be force fed a worldview. They want to be able to, you know, discuss the things that they want to discuss and explore the things that they want to explore and talk about the things and research the things that they want to research, and that's just not possible right now with some of these other models. And so you know, understanding, you know this inherent bias that is in AI. You know, obviously we, we want to give people options. We want to give you options. If you want to have a bias that is programmed towards your worldview, you can do that. If you want to have sort of a neutral, unbiased model that presents both sides, you can do that, and so I'm really excited about this.

Speaker 1: 16:33

It's kind of crazy that we've been doing this for a very short period of time, focused on building sort of our own chat GPT alternative, and we already have something stood up that we've been testing internally for the past week, and it's like it's mind blowing to me that our small team on our limited budget can stand something up like this and I could put it side by side with chat GPT and the answers are not only better because it's actually answered the things that I'm asking it on, like chat GPT, but they're also smarter, because it's sort of no comparison, like if I ask a question to chat GPT and it refuses the answer and I ask ours, the same question, and it gives me this detailed explanation, that's a huge win. It's sort of mind blowing because chat GPT, openai, which is built by OpenAI, is a $90 billion company, and here we are with our small team with limited resources funded by our community, and we've built something to match exactly what they have in a matter of a few weeks, which is sort of mind blowing. And this is a testament to our God given intelligence, right, our God given intelligence and our ability to think creatively and to build things and to create things. These are all gifts from God and we're able to use that and go up against this Titan of industry that has 100 million plus users and is a $90 billion company and has a $10 billion investment from Microsoft and all the human resources in the world, all the compute resources in the world, all the money in the world, and we're able to build something that goes toe to toe with exactly what they've built, thanks to open source technology and thanks to the creative ingenuity and the intellect that God has blessed us with. And so we're going to be getting this thing out there as soon as possible for you guys to use.

Speaker 1: 18:42

I think you're going to be really impressed with it and I think it's going to be a big deal. You know, unlike GAB social, it doesn't have a lot of sort of the hurdles of getting people to use it right. So people you know, coming over to a new social network, a lot of people are sort of dopamine, hooked on X or Facebook or Instagram or whatever they come over to a new social network, there's sort of a barrier where they don't know anybody, they don't know how to use it, yet all that stuff. With this, most people know how to use the AI systems and if you don't, it's going to be we're going to sort of have our own unique spin on the experience for people who have never used it before to be able to quickly and easily understand how to use it. And this is something that has a very low friction, very low barrier to entry For people to use it, and I think it's going to be huge, I think it's going to take off, I think it's going to be a big deal and I think it's really going to put GAB on the map. And you know, then we'll be able to grow social in tandem with that as well, and you know, I'm just I'm really excited about it.

Speaker 1: 19:51

So this is what we're focused on right now we want to make these uncensored AI tools accessible to everyone, not just tech-savvy people. Far too many people are unaware of the potential of these tools, and if we make it really easy to understand and really easy to use and it's not forcing woke propaganda down your throat. I think it will enable people to learn faster, produce higher quality work and have fun with these advanced technologies, and so you're going to be able to generate images. That's the other thing too. With a lot of the image generators, they're censored as well. You try to get it to create certain things and it'll reject, and we're not going to be doing that. So, with one exception, we're not going to allow our image generator to generate porn, and these other ones will do that, but they won't generate political things and controversial topics. They won't do that. But they'll allow you to generate the porn, but not that. So we're not going to allow that. That's the only thing that we're not going to allow, but beyond that, you can ask this thing anything you want and have it do whatever you want, and I think it's going to be a big deal. So we're really excited about it and we hope to have that out soon. But that's the update for today.

Speaker 1: 21:11

I'm excited to get back into the podcasting. I've missed it. It's a good outlet for me and you guys really enjoy it. But we got to build for the glory of God, guys. That's what it all boils down to we have to build and we have to embrace new technology and take dominion of it for the glory of God. And that's just the way I see things. So anyway, thanks for tuning in. Guys, remember to speak freely. Christ is King.