Well, I'd see it more conceptual. I don't think a real beast will show up. I think it's mostly allegories about crowd psychology, and as with all prophecies, if they are vague enough, it is inevitable that at least some part of it can be interpreted in a light that makes it true.

"The beast" may be mankind's tendencies towards totalitarianism.
The current hype about AI in general and generative LLMs in particular definitely qualifies for the "image of the beast". Just don't forget that salvation is meant for those who withstand¹.

And any decent PBX admin should assign 666 as phone number for

¹ or better: damnation is waiting for those who don't - see Revelation 16:2


In reply to Re^4: What's your view on AI coding assistants? by soonix
in thread What's your view on AI coding assistants? by Arunbear

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.