theTrumpet.com
  • Gerald Flurry
  • Watch
    • Key of David TV Program
    • Trumpet Daily Program
    • Life and Teachings Program
    • Trumpet World Program
    • Trumpet Videos
  • Listen
  • Library
    • Books and Booklets
    • Trumpet Magazine
    • Bible Correspondence Course
    • Reprint Articles
    • Trumpet Brief E-mail Newsletter
    • Renew Trumpet Subscription
  • Sections
    • Anglo-America
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • Economy
    • Society
    • Living
    • Infographics
  • Trends
  • About Us
  • Basket
  • Gerald Flurry
  • Watch
    • Key of David TV Program
    • Trumpet Daily Program
    • Life and Teachings Program
    • Trumpet World Program
    • Trumpet Videos
  • Listen
  • Library
    • Books and Booklets
    • Trumpet Magazine
    • Bible Correspondence Course
    • Reprint Articles
    • Trumpet Brief E-mail Newsletter
    • Renew Trumpet Subscription
  • Sections
    • Anglo-America
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • Economy
    • Society
    • Living
    • Infographics
  • Trends
  • About Us
  • Basket

Beware Our AI Overlords

By Joel Hilliker • May 7, 2026

Beware Our AI Overlords

Beware Our AI Overlords

By Joel Hilliker • May 7, 2026

Good morning!

Humanity is barreling toward an AI-dominated future. We have no idea what that looks like or what it means.

Receive a free news briefing in your inbox each weekday—the Trumpet Brief.

In a striking essay published Monday, Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark says we’re approaching an epic turning point: having machines that can design, train and improve their own replacements without human help. He estimates a better-than-60 percent chance that fully automated R&D—where AI handles the entire process of creating better AI—could occur by the end of 2028. This, he says, marks a point of no return into an unpredictable new era.

  • Coding power is exploding. Today’s top models ace tough programming challenges, and engineers at leading labs now rely on AI for most of their coding work, including tests and verification.
  • AI can do harder tasks for longer. Early models needed human intervention after seconds or minutes. Now they can work independently for hours, and their capacity is growing quickly. Some experts project that AI agents could handle weeklong projects on their own by the end of this year.
  • Scientific grunt work is being automated. AI is getting dramatically better at learning from research papers, reproducing experiments and optimizing complex training processes.

The optimists focus on how AI progress will lead to rapid advances across many fields.

The realists say this raises serious questions about safety and control.

  • The big issue is: How do you ensure self-improving AI systems remain under human control?

Case in point: Claude Mythos Preview is a powerful new AI model that excels at autonomously finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities in critical computer systems. Last month, it bypassed key AI barriers that surprised even its developers.

  • The risk of its unprecedented offensive cybersecurity capabilities enabling devastating cyberattacks is so high that Anthropic made the model available only to a limited group of trusted partners to help patch vulnerabilities in key infrastructure before malicious actors can exploit them.
  • It’s only a matter of time before other companies and other countries achieve these capabilities. Meaning months, weeks or days.

Meanwhile the U.S. military is going all in on AI. Last Friday, the Pentagon announced partnerships with eight major companies—Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, nvidia, SpaceX, Reflection and Oracle—to embed AI inside its most classified networks.

  • It has already aggressively brought consumer-grade AI into defense operations. The technology is being wired directly into the U.S. military’s most sensitive targeting systems.
  • Think of it: The same pattern-matching engines on your phone that confidently suggest where to go for dinner can sound equally confident when suggesting munitions targets.

Ethics alarm bells are going off everywhere.

  • Anthropic notably refused to allow its models to be used for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance, a stance that provoked the Pentagon to sideline it from some contracts.
  • Anthropic’s head of safeguards research, Mrinank Sharma, resigned in February, warning that “the world is in peril.” He decried pressures to set aside safety concerns amid fast-moving AI risks like bioterrorism.

Mankind in aggregate is dumping jaw-dropping investment into advancing this technology as hastily as possible—every nation scrambling to edge out enemies who will use it against them.

  • Calamitous outcomes look inevitable—possibly including civilizational suicide.

This is the ineluctable, ludicrous logic of the human condition. Which is why Jesus Christ’s warnings of our world climaxing in unparalleled suffering must be heeded.

Iran War Update

  • The chance for a deal remains intact; some reports say the United States and Iran are closer to ending the war than at any time since hostilities began on February 28.
  • U.S. forces suffered more damage than previously reported, the Washington Post claimed yesterday after analyzing available satellite images. It counts at least 228 structures damaged and over 400 personnel injured. These numbers exceed what the U.S. government has indicated.
  • French carrier nears Hormuz: France’s Charles De Gaulle nuclear aircraft carrier and its strike group have transited the Suez Canal and entered the Red Sea for a potential Strait of Hormuz mission, President Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday. A German mine-hunter vessel is en route to join nato Mine Countermeasures Group 2 in the Mediterranean Sea for a similar purpose. Both countries have stressed that they will not intervene until the war officially ends.

New Counterterrorism Strategy Changes Priorities

Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed a new national plan to fight terrorism that elevates left-wing groups like Antifa to a top-tier priority, just behind drug cartels and Islamic terrorism.

  • The 2026 National Terrorism Strategy includes violent “narcoterrorist” criminal gangs as fitting the definition of groups that use violence to achieve political goals.
  • This is a distinct change from Trump’s first term, which focused mainly on Islamic threats, and from the regime of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which emphasized alleged white supremacist dangers.

Sebastian Gorka, the senior White House counterterrorism official, explained the change. “We are taking ideology seriously,” he said. He highlighted a rise in left-wing violence, including the assassination last year of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk by a radical leftist. Gorka also described attacks on Christians and conservatives as a growing problem.

Top three priorities:

  1. First, the new strategy takes aim at the sophisticated, heavily armed, violent Mexican multinational, multibillion-dollar drug cartels that smuggle fentanyl and other deadly drugs that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.
  2. Second, the strategy continues the fight against jihadist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Over the past six months, President Trump has designated various international chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations.
  3. Third, the strategy prioritizes “the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist, such as Antifa.” Antifa is a loose, decentralized network of activists who oppose conservative ideas and use violence during protests. The government now treats it as a terrorist threat and intends to further map its networks, identify participants, and stop attacks before they occur. Gorka said the policy targets any group that believes violence is justified for political ends.

Leviticus 26 contains one of the most important prophecies in the Bible. God promises blessings—rain in due season, abundant crops, peace, protection from enemies—if His people obey His commandments and keep His Sabbaths.

  • But if they refuse, He warns: “… I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart …” (verse 16).

Americans are among the modern descendants of the very individuals God spoke to in ancient Israel. Terror threats in the U.S. have increased in recent years. The number of terrorism investigations has grown sharply, with the fbi disrupting hundreds of plots annually. Terror, from abroad and at home, has been appointed over us because we have forgotten God.

Germany and Israel ‘Closer Than Ever’

Germany and Israel have “established a completely new security partnership with each other,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Tuesday after meeting with Israel’s foreign minister in Berlin. Wadephul said:

  • Standing up “for the existence and for the security of the State of Israel is at the core of our relations.”
  • “We have a common interest” concerning keeping down Iran’s ballistic and nuclear programs.
  • “We are happy to have friends like Israel by our side.”

These statements follow a series of significant actions from Israel:

  • In January, Israeli government agencies and German government agencies held joint cyberattack exercises.
  • Throughout the war, Israel has risked military and civilian lives to continue supplying stocks of crucial air defense missiles to Germany.
  • Yesterday, Israel’s Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy said it wants to ship kerosene to Germany to help with oil shortages resulting from the Iran war.

Blossoming relationship? Israel is deeply trusting the same nation that tried to exterminate all Jewish life less than a century ago. Has Germany changed from its World War ii ways? Bible prophecy says no.

The Bible prophesies that Israel will entrust its security to “Assyria,” modern Germany—and suffer a monstrous betrayal. To see where these prophecies are located, read “Are Germany and Israel Truly Friends?” alongside your Bible.

IN OTHER NEWS

German AI priorities are overpowering EU AI priorities: The European Parliament reached a tentative agreement today that caves into Germany’s agenda for artificial intelligence despite protests from 10 other EU nations. Over the years, the European Union has instituted extensive regulations on information technology in the name of user privacy, yet this exemption for German industrial AI development shows not only that these regulations are a geopolitical tool for Europe to use (largely against the United States) but that they are subject to Europe’s increasingly dominant nation: Germany. Bible prophecy indicates that advanced technologies like AI will be weaponized.

Sudan recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia on Tuesday, claiming that four drone strikes on its borders, including an attack on the Khartoum airport, originated in Ethiopia. In the past, Ethiopia has allowed the Rapid Support Forces (rsf), a Sudanese rebel group, to train and launch attacks from within its borders. This comes only a few months after Sudan recalled its ambassador to Kenya after Kenya allowed rsf rebels to host meetings to establish a rival Sudanese government. Not only have events like these stoked fears that Sudan’s civil war and Ethiopia’s tensions could spread across international borders, but they are part of a wider trend that could jeopardize the relative stability of the entire Red Sea region and contribute to the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak sparks fears: At least 23 passengers from the hantavirus-infected MV Hondius left the cruise ship in late April and returned home to Australia, England, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the United States without knowing they might have been exposed to hantavirus, which can kill 40 percent of those infected. Three people have died so far, one remains critically ill in intensive care in South Africa, and others have milder symptoms. Health officials are trying to contact everyone who disembarked the ship. Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24 that plagues would be among the dire signs that precede His Second Coming.

Barack Obama reemerges to criticize President Trump: Former President Barack Obama has increased his frequency of public statements over the past several months, claiming that Trump divided the country after the killing of Charlie Kirk, characterizing comments on autism as “violence against the truth,” and saying that Republicans would rather shut down the government than give people health care. Many Democrats welcome his rhetoric as the party lacks a clear leader two years into Trump’s second term. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry identified Obama as the power that fundamentally transformed the United States during his presidency and usurped the presidency itself through Joe Biden. He also wrote in the September 2024 Trumpet issue that God “is beginning to silence this man! Barack Obama’s power is diminishing before our eyes.” Obama’s reemergence only highlights the fact that he no longer wields the same influence over the “deep state” and American culture and politics.

The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence


𝕏

E-mail Joel Hilliker
or Follow Joel Hilliker on Twitter/𝕏

theTrumpet.com
About Us
Contact Us
Frequently Asked Questions
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Copyright © 2026 Philadelphia Church of God, All Rights Reserved