Why I've Fired OpenAI From Our Book Publishing Company

This was the last straw. And now it's time to really push back. They've gone too far now.

The Tower of Babel as painted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the weekend, I did something that I have not done very often lately. I considered a book submission from a new author.

I usually have not been searching for or soliciting new titles here at God of the Desert Books because we’re in really good shape on how many books we have in production. I like the group of authors we have and have grown content to focus on helping them develop more books, rather than go out and seek new people. But when someone has a project that may fit with our odd set of Bible-based values here, then I’ll consider them.

I won’t go into any details about this particular author to protect their privacy. I do not want to embarass anyone for something that is admittedly embarrassing.

At one point during the 90-minute Zoom call to discuss the author’s book, they informed me that their understanding of Jewish mysticism was primarily informed by ChatGPT. This book that they had chosen to pitch to me, intended to detail their views and experiences, was based not on the Bible, but on delusions fueled by ChatGPT.

Yes, here I was, in the middle of an investigative journalism project researching OpenAI and other companies creating “Large Language Model” chatbots, and now I had stumbled upon someone who was literally in the grips of “Chatbot psychosis.”

The alarm bell for me went off when this person described their views about souls and attributed them to Jewish mysticism. What they described did not make sense to me based on all I’d read from Jewish authors and scholars the last two decades. There are certainly many different approaches here so I asked to know who they were basing their views on—which books or authors? And ChatGPT was the only answer. The garbled, quasi-Kabbalah theology I had been pitched, that had animated this author to write a book, came from the random guesswork of a Large Language Model.

Oh, crap.

In the middle of the book pitch, I had to all of a sudden stop and explain in brief the science of the Large Language Models, and remind that I had grown much more skeptical about the industry in recent months.

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Oops.

It isn’t often that a book pitch like this totally unravels right in the middle of it. Sally and I still reviewed the submission before passing on it under one primary reason: the book was not based on a theology that is compatible with ours. It was not based on the Bible.

I try to be very open to a wide range of views here. I want to work with Democrats and Republicans. I used to be on the Left and I used to be on the Right so I can relate in different ways to people who still identify with either of those movements. Here at GOTD, on our author list we’ve ultimately come to be a publisher with a foundation in two religions: Judaism and Catholicism. For whatever reason, we primarily have authors who practice these faiths. And their friendship has helped me grow deeper in my own faith through exploring their traditions. I believe that both Judaism and Catholicism are pathways to the God of the Bible. And that’s because both base themselves foundationally on the same source:

The story of Abraham and the Torah. We may practice different religions and disagree about “Left” and “Right” but we can agree that this narrative and the morals embedded within it are the foundation from where we begin.

This was the original logo of God of the Desert Books when we first launched in June 2022, transforming the company from its origins in Liberty Island Books:

I received this Bible when I was in third grade at the Los Altos United Methodist Church in Los Altos, California.

I have now restored this as our logo. I do this now because I want to encourage people to pick up an actual printed Bible and not to let the Large Language Model tempt them anymore. This is where you go to find God—not your smartphone.

Read real books. Stop using chatbots so much. And base your life on the moral values which have been foundational in forging free societies for centuries.

In firing ChatGPT from our publishing company, I am saying this: I am not going to use any products having anything to do with Sam Altman. Just as I announced in 2023 that I would be boycotting Elon Musk’s products. Now, I am doing the same with him. And yes, his decision to invest in a company intending to genetically engineer human beings is a piece of this too. They’re having to look to set up shop in another country because what they are doing is illegal in the United States and Europe.

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Altman, Musk, and others in Silicon Valley are using their billions of dollars to promote an idolatrous religion. They are wanting us to rely on chatbots rather than our Bibles. They are wanting us to trust the wealthy tech CEOS, rather than our God. They are wanting to attempt to build a utopia here on earth, totally in defiance of the clear teachings of Genesis chapter 11:

You don’t have to be Jewish or Catholic. You don’t have to believe in this God of the Desert, this God of Israel, who I have named this company to honor.

You can be a total atheist and can read the passage above and see how all the data centers being built right now to power chatbots which lie about what the Jewish people believe and that spit out antisemitic videos mocking them, could resemble METAPHORICALLY a “tower of babel.”

I believe that too many people right now have made the concept of “artificial intelligence” an idol. They are worshipping it and in doing so it will ultimately destroy them.

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The danger of idolatry is that in choosing to worship anything, we come to take on its qualities, and ultimately that quality will be DEATH, since all idols are DEAD MATTER.

Over the last few weeks, Sally Shideler Swindle and I have begun critical investigations into OpenAI, large language models, and the broader Silicon Valley-based techno-utopian community. And we’re horrified. I’m really stressed out now that I’ve seen behind the curtain and can see how this is leading us toward an economic collapse.

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So what are we going to do? I have ultimately decided now that as part of our planned expansion next year from God of the Desert Books into God of the Desert Digital Media Studios, we will be launching multiple new Substacks and YouTube channels. Many of them will focus on artificial intelligence and the technology industry more broadly.

Currently I have eight new publications planned for launch and I’m tempted to just drop them all at once to try and show the depth of the problems here. However, for now I’ll start by naming the first two which will launch next year and which will point toward some of the deeper themes we’ll explore:

The first and most important will be what is tentatively called Jewish Catholic Journalism Digest (JCJD). We will be providing a platform for Jewish and Catholic journalists to write about the Jewish and Catholic worlds. Those of other faiths who wish to write on these religious traditions too are welcome to particiapte also. Here we’re particularly interested in covering the Papacy of Pope Leo, who has shown serious interest in nurturing interfaith brotherhood. I am inspired in this too by the recent surge we have seen in antisemitic voices on the Right. The theology outlined in Nostra Aetate will undergird this publication. This piece of it in particular I will highlight here:

The church of Christ acknowledges that in God’s plan of salvation the beginnings of its faith and election are to be found in the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. It professes that all Christ’s faithful, who as people of faith are daughters and sons of Abraham (see Gal 3:7), are included in the same patriarch’s call and that the salvation of the church is mystically prefigured in the exodus of God’s chosen people from the land of bondage. On this account the church cannot forget that it received the revelation of the Old Testament by way of that people with whom God in his inexpressible mercy established the ancient covenant. Nor can it forget that it draws nourishment from that good olive tree onto which the wild olive branches of the Gentiles have been grafted (see Rom 11:17-24). The church believes that Christ who is our peace has through his cross reconciled Jews and Gentiles and made them one in himself (see Eph 2:14,16).

And so, as the Christian Church was grafted upon the tree of Abraham, I now call to our technology idolizing brothers and sisters: you too are invited to join the tree. Slow the building of your Data Center Towers and base what you are doing on ethical premises derived from the Torah, as illuminated by the combined wisdom of both rabbis and priests.

The second publication that I am going to launch next year will tentatively be called AI Skeptic News Briefs (AISNB). Here we will write short news brief-style articles which take a skeptical view of claims of artificial intelligence. We will cover the technology industry broadly with the understanding that if someone is a wealthy entrpreneur in this industry then we should doubt the truth of what they are telling us when they are proposing some amazing miracle product that will save us all.

The debate over whether one should be “pro” or “anti” on so-called AI products is a false one. Take each product, each claim, each Chatbot output with SKEPTICISM. These programs will lie to us. That’s well-established now. And it is not acceptable.

If a human employee lied to you as much at ChatGPT did then you would fire them.

I need help with these projects and with this expansion now of our publishing company into a media company offering video and podcasts. If you would like to contribute in some way toward helping us grow these publications, please reach out to me here on Substack or respond to this email. We will be considering contributing writers, editors, artists, and people with skills of all sorts. We’d certainly appreciate people with math, accounting, and technical expertise.

God of the Desert Digital Media Studios will also be open for investors and we hope to someday have investors who are Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The children of Abraham must come together again and it will begin here.

And if this is a mission you want to support then please consider a premium subscription too. We’re going to try and make the vast majority of our content free but will also expand our paywalled podcast offerings soon.

Thank you for your support.