AI goes berserk

Artificial intelligence has become three things. It is a religion. It is drugs. It is a war machine.

More than 900 million now subscribe to ChatGPT. That’s more followers than most religions have. Add the subscribers of ChatGPT competitors such as Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro, DeepSeek, Sora 2 Pro and Veo 3.1, and you now have AI as the largest religion on earth, exceeding the followers of the Catholic Church, 1.4 billion, and Islam, nearly two billion.

AI offers good therapy for the sick, near-sick, those who think they are sick and those who are simply mad. 

Karl Marx said it bluntly. Religion is the opium of the people. Marx meant that religion “acts as a coping mechanism for oppressed people, dulling the pain of harsh living conditions much like a painkiller.” Without AI, Donald Trump, Netanyahu and the Ayatollahs could not possibly give vent to their madness on mankind. Madness, as you know, is both a deathly and a debilitating disease.

AI is a war machine? Of course. Elon Musk can dictate the tempo and severity of fighting between Russia and Ukraine, thanks to his Starlink satellites run by AI. The United States, Israel and lran all use AI to cripple each other’s war wherewithal and to conduct assassination strikes on commanders and leaders.

The frontiers AI has conquered have alarmed Pope Leo XIV. On May 25, 2026, he issued a blistering and breathtaking 38,000-word (without the footnotes) encyclical contemptuous of AI and its inventors.

Reported Vatican News:

“Marking the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV releases his first encyclical, entitled Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. He appeals for the safeguarding of humanity, promotion of truth, dignity of work, social justice and peace.

“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

Relates Vatican News: Divided into five chapters, Magnifica Humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not a force antagonistic to humanitynor is it inherently evil. However, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”  Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell.”

The New York Times says “Pope Leo XIV set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from AI’s most disruptive effects.”

He “outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major AI developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.”

AI has made a few private individuals to solidify control of mankind’s destiny in a manner and breathtaking speed and coverage no human being has done before. 

These individuals include Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel and Anthony Lewandowski and their companies. They are the new ayatollahs, popes and prophets  of gloom and boom.

Data, the pope insists in his encyclical, cannot solely be in private hands. Hence, the need for transparency, vigilance and regulation. And a pause in AI's rollout.

“Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care for the human family,” Pope Leo explains.

He says: “This need is all the more urgent given the frequent imbalance between the speed of technological growth and the slower development of awareness, norms, safeguards and institutions capable of governing its effects.”

“Intelligence, when absolutized, overshadows other essential dimensions of life, such as affection, the will, commitment and relationships. Similarly, technical power, if left unbalanced, does not make us more capable; it makes us more isolated and more vulnerable to being dominated and excluded.”

The pope is clearly anxious about AI’s impact. He frets: “Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations or bear responsibility for consequences.”

“When the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions – must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion.”

The pope suggests, “It is the State’s responsibility to ensure cohesion, unity and the proper organization of civil society, so that the common good can be pursued with everyone’s contribution.”

The problem with state intervention is that governments themselves could be worse problems, especially in countries like China, Russia and Iran, where democracy and the exercise of basic freedoms are neither guaranteed nor practised.

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