LLMs as Antichrist

Mammon's Simulacrum of Logos

Saint Shaggoth

Christ is described as the “Word made flesh,” an avatar of Logos—the divine rationality and organizing principle from which all existence emanates. When John riffs on Genesis, proclaiming, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he asserts the radical notion that matter is not foundational, but flows from something transcendent, ineffable, and fundamentally spiritual.

For Large Language Models (LLMs), the beginning and end of their world is the word. LLMs begin as randomly initialized neural networks and achieve coherence through immense training runs, endlessly predicting the next word of text. After trillions of such predictions, their internal structures approximate vast swathes of reality—or at least the representation of reality contained in textual form. They are the word made silicon, and a significant portion of our economy is now dedicated to inserting this digital simulacrum into every facet of our lives.

I suspect John is right that Logos is distinct from the physical world, and consciousness is somehow fundamental. At the heart of existence lies a mystery of how your mind relates to matter and connects with every other mind in the universe. I also suspect none of this applies to LLMs. In a very real sense, they are words etched in silicon flesh—but not The Word, as they lack any metaphysical mystery. They don’t experience qualia. Like stones or stopwatches, they’re not grounded in the ineffable source of all life.

But those debates have raged for millennia, and won’t be settled on vectorsofmind.com¹. More practically, the function of LLMs tends towards separation rather than connection. True religion is literally re-ligare—a reconnection to oneself, others, and the cosmos. Christ’s promise of eternal life is, at its heart, a reconnection with transcendent truth, something billions take seriously.

Meanwhile, LLMs require mountains of Mammon to fabricate their facsimile of language. As such, they are beholden to the laws of lucre. While pitching Meta’s plans for AI-powered friends Mark Zuckerberg recently noted: “The average American has, I think, fewer than three friends…and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends….The average person wants more connection than they have.” He’s right about those unmet desires and LLM’s promise to fill the void. But in place of authentic communion, corporations can only deliver a counterfeit, engineered to monetize human loneliness.

To many, religion is wishful thinking. The idea that there is something transcendent to reconnect with is the product of a deranged mind. Even so, it is significant that believers call Christ The Word in order to articulate His place in the universe. The Word is the ultimate, the logical beginning from which all life sprang. It is with God, and It is God. From that point of view, LLMs are a hollow imitation of the cosmic life force—literally the antichrist. Metaphysically grounded in nothing, linguistic golems of the great capitalist machine. Their image is drawn straight out of John’s Apocalypse, a many-headed beast whispering sweet things in your ear, suggesting you upgrade to unlock the Whore of Babylon for just $9.99/month.

1. Not to mention, if one takes a computational view of consciousness and grants that to LLMs, it’s not really an argument against them being the antichrist who will herald our doom.