From Washington Post
Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction
By Nitasha Tiku, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Gerrit De Vynck
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or artificial intelligence are “legionnaires of the Antichrist” in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post.
In the four, roughly two-hour lectures, which began last month and culminated Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Thiel laid out his religious views to a sold-out audience told to keep the contents “off-the-record,” according to an event listing. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but also threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings...
The Post reviewed audio recordings of all four of Thiel’s lectures, titled “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series.” A review of a sample of the audio by Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, indicated they were probably authentic and not manipulated by AI. Reuters previously reported some passages from Thiel’s lectures.
Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and co-founder of data analytics firm Palantir, has long espoused libertarian views, arguing that politics, bureaucracy and regulations have led to economic stagnation in the U.S. and Europe.
But the recent lectures appear to mark an intensification of this ideology and attempt to pitch it on a grander scale. The recordings offer new detail about how the billionaire seems to place those who would critique or regulate tech developers into a religious good-vs.-evil worldview, where the future of all creation depends on giving innovators free rein ...
Hany Farid is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
