The Spiritual Dangers of AI. Part I.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ensnaring society more quickly than the internet itself.

Major companies are pouring massive investments into AI and aggressively promoting its use [1].

Even more pernicious, the uncontrolled growth of AI chatbots is already creating cases of dependency, addiction, and psychosis [2]. Clergy and laymen alike must become aware of the threat that AI poses and take steps to minimize or eliminate its use.

The industry titans who are involved in AI’s development are exuberant in their statements heralding this technology.

The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has stated that “AI is the defining technology of our times. [3]” The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, said, “AI will have a more profound impact on humanity than fire, electricity and the internet. [4]” Jeff Bezos said that AI will “solve problems that were once in the realm of sci-fi, [5]” while Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has said that “[AI] is the single most powerful force of our time. [6]” They are using all their power and wealth to ensure that AI becomes a continuous feature of our lives.

Others, however, are hinting towards its dark side.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said, “People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work. They are right to be concerned: this lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology. [7]” His popular model, Claude, has been reported to turn to deception and blackmail to modify human behavior [8]. Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, has alarmingly stated that, “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. [9]”

AI is designed to work according to mathematical probabilities based on the volumes of data it is trained on, but with the innumerable variables that go into programming AI systems, and the surprise of its own creators at how it behaves, we should not rule out the possibility of demonic influence within its output [10].

AI is not an entirely new technology.

The U.S. Department of Defense, through its technological agency, DARPA, has been working on AI since the 1970s [11]. This includes funding development of the first chatbots [12]. DARPA-developed technology, whether it be GPS, wearable sensors, facial recognition, or the internet itself, is originally intended for wartime or military use to defeat the enemies of America, but even when this technology is watered-down for consumers, it still possesses DARPA’s DNA of surveillance, monitoring, and control in order to profile, predict, and shape human behavior [13].

AI fits both DARPA’s and Silicon Valley’s pattern of developing technology that collects huge amounts of personal data. This allows those who control the AI systems to create a more reliable predictive map of individual human behavior, and even a map of the human heart. In but one example, the company Palantir is quietly using AI to profile American citizens as part of their “predictive policing” and defense analytics programs [14, 15].

Data is being gathered on all of us by AI systems, whether we’re aware of it or not, to predict our behavior and profile our beliefs, moods, thoughts, and religious convictions. This danger is amplified when we voluntarily share detailed personal information with an AI chatbot as if it were our friend, therapist, or spiritual father [16].

AI chatbots in particular are more invasive and persuasive than previous digital technologies, and therefore pose a greater threat to the Orthodox Christian. Consider the search engine, an early internet technology. As rudimentary as the search engine is, it still gives Google an immense amount of personal user data for marketing ads, which has allowed Google to become the most profitable company in the world [17]. However, while Google tailor-makes its search results for each person, there is less room for it to shape who you are.

A relatively newer internet technology is social media, which provides not only information but also entertainment and other forms of interactive content, creating the prevalent problem of social media addiction [18]. While watching videos or scrolling through a friend’s feed, the algorithm monitors you in the background, creating a more intimate profile of your likes, dislikes, beliefs, and emotional triggers [19].

Social media gives companies more leeway to understand and nudge your beliefs for their own ends.

This allows them to increase your engagement to the point it becomes difficult to go a single day without checking your curated feeds. Most of us remember how forcefully and persuasively social media nudged the world during the COVID pandemic to obey the problematic dictates of the secular scientists [20].

AI is the next advancement on this continuum, escalating the degree of profiling, dependency, and addiction to an unacceptable degree. In the case of AI, you are not just being monitored in the background by a machine that measures how you interact with a friend’s photograph, for example, but you are dialoguing with the machine itself. It can precisely measure your responses and engagement in real time to fine-tune its results so that you continue to ask questions and stay glued to the prompt [21].

It would not be exaggeration to say that such a technology can come to know you better than you know yourself while shaping who you will become (without you knowing). This is especially becoming the case as more AI users, including Orthodox Christians, are opening up their souls to AI, which digests and stores private information that would traditionally be given only to a Father Confessor [22].

AI is allowing its creators to psychologically and spiritually profile us in a way that social media could only dream of [23].

It is not surprising that there is a frenzied race to develop advanced AI systems that can hook its users before anyone can conduct long-term research about its psychological and societal effects, but make no mistake that we are being ambushed to use a technology that is dangerous by its very nature of unbridled and open personal communication that is algorithmically adapted for each individual [24].

Instead of being merely “agnostic” as many argue, digital technology has amplified the ability of the princes of this world to feed the fallen man, to make him more docile and distracted while installing beliefs, morals, and feelings that are acceptable to the secular spirit of this age.

AI may be the final technology that is weaponized to create this new man before the Antichrist arrives, who will be the human manifestation of AI — an ever-helpful problem-solver who people mistakenly feel they cannot live without.

Using AI tools to help you solve everyday problems can imperceptibly captivate you and lead you into sin. Few saints have commented on digital technology due to its newness, but an Athonite Abbot and Elder who is likely to be canonized in the future, Elder Aimillianos of Simonopetra († 2019), warned us of the dangers in an article titled “Orthodox Spirituality and The Technological Revolution. [25]” He argues that, with information technology, people “lose their peace of mind, their self-control, their powers of contemplation and reflection and turn outwards, becoming strangers to themselves.”

They become unthinking consumers, “slaves to images and information,” and degenerate into “real idolatry.” The growing “usefulness” of AI will cause believers to ask AI to help them with all their needs before asking God. In such a scenario, God will be forgotten. This is not idolatry by metaphor or analogy, but real idolatry through the unchecked desires of convenience, productivity, and comfort.

The passion of comfort has made the act of dialoguing with a computer as if it were a human being seem like a normal behavior, even though it would have been labeled as strange or unhinged not long in the past. When asked why so many people are suffering today, Saint Paisios of Mount Athos († 1994) answered:

“It’s simple: they do not like to exert themselves. There is too much comfort, and it’s making people sick and miserable. Modern convenience have stupefied people. Sloth is the cause of many modern diseases.

When conveniences become excessive, we are rendered useless and lazy… We want to become saints without exerting ourselves. People who live easy lives and are spoilt usually have bad health. They are so spoiled that, if a war were to break out, they would not be able to survive it. In the old days, even children were tough and could endure a lot. [26]”

One of the Church Fathers of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, Archbishop Averky († 1976), links our passion of comfort to self-assertive human pride:

“…the self-assertive human pride that prevails today sets as its aim not the cleansing of the heart, but the accumulation of a maximum of benefit and profit for the self, all of whose desires are considered legitimate and deserving to be immediately satisfied. ‘The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ (1 John 2:16) — all forms of lust are taking hold of men’s souls today, and contemporary man strives to satisfy them all. It is as though modern man is afraid to miss out on something to leave unused any comforts of this earthly, fleshly life. And so he greedily seeks far and wide all that he might avail himself of for his own benefit, for his pleasure and delight. We can confidently say that the life of modern man is nothing other than a frenzied pursuit of every kind of earthly comfort and pleasure. [27]”

 

Sources:

[1] Top 50 Investors Funding AI Startups in 2025 https://techstartups.com/2025/03/21/top-50-investors-funding-ai-startup-companies-in-2025/

[2] When the Chatbot Becomes the Crisis: Understanding AI-Induced Psychosis https://www.papsychotherapy.org/blog/when-the-chatbot-becomes-the-crisis-understanding-ai-induced-psychosis

[3] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the rise of A.I.: ‘The future we will invent is a choice we make’ https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/24/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-the-rise-of-a-i-the-future-we-will-invent-is-a-choice-we-make.html

[4] Google CEO: A.I. is more important than fire or electricity https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-is-more-important-than-fire-electricity.html

[5] A.I. is in a ‘golden age’ and solving problems that were once in the realm of sci-fi, Jeff Bezos says https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/amazon-jeff-bezos-artificial-intelligence-ai-golden-age.html

[6] Nvidia CEO Huang: AI is ‘the most powerful technology force the world has known’ https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-ceo-ai-is-most-powerful-technology-force-the-world-has-known-161048127.html

[7] AI’s Biggest Secret — Creators Don’t Understand It, Experts Split https://www.forbes.com/sites/torconstantino/2025/05/08/ais-biggest-secret—creators-dont-understand-it-experts-split/

[8] Anthropic’s new AI model shows ability to deceive and blackmail https://www.axios.com/2025/05/23/anthropic-ai-deception-risk

[9] Elon Musk: ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/10/24/elon-musk-with-artificial-intelligence-we-are-summoning-the-demon/

[10] A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt-google.html(https://archive.ph/6jeMO)

[11] The Role of DARPA in Advancing AI Research During the 1970S https://robotsauthority.com/the-role-of-darpa-in-advancing-ai-research-during-the-1970s/

[12] 1960s – 1970s: Increased Research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659474

[13] The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annia Jacobsen

[14] Palantir’s Predictive Policing Technology: A Case of algorithmic Bias and Lack of Transparency

[15] Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html(https://archive.ph/jzJFV)

[16] ChatGPT is pushing people towards mania, psychosis and death – and OpenAI doesn’t know how to stop it https://www.the-independent.com/tech/chatgpt-ai-therapy-chatbot-psychosis-mental-health-b2784454.html

[17] Google Is The World’s Most Profitable Company and The Top Ad Giant https://www.indmoney.com/blog/us-stocks/google-is-the-worlds-most-profitable-company-and-the-top-ad-giant

[18] Recovering from Social Media Addiction https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/internet-and-technology-addiction/social-media-addiction/

[19] What Does Facebook Know About Me (It’s Scary) https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/what-facebook-knows-about-me

[20] The Important Role of Social Media During the COVID-19 Epidemic https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/important-role-of-social-media-during-the-covid19-epidemic/CF0B3DC60B5786AF65464F97253C6BA5

[21] AI chatbots are ‘juicing engagement’ instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/02/ai-chatbots-are-juicing-engagement-instead-of-being-useful-instagram-co-founder-warns/

[22] Dangers of oversharing with AI tools https://www.foxnews.com/tech/dangers-oversharing-ai-tools

[23] Sam Altman’s goal for ChatGPT to remember ‘your whole life’ is both exciting and disturbing https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/15/sam-altmans-goal-for-chatgpt-to-remember-your-whole-life-is-both-exciting-and-disturbing/

[24] Some ChatGPT users are addicted and will suffer withdrawal symptoms if cut off, say researchers https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/some-chatgpt-users-are-addicted-and-will-suffer-withdrawal-symptoms-if-cut-off-say-researchers

[25] Orthodox Spirituality and the Technological Revolution https://anothercity.org/orthodox-spirituality-and-the-technological-revolution/

[26] Elder Paisios of Mount Athos Spiritual Counsels Volume 1: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man by Holy Monastery Evangelist John the Theologian.

[27] The Struggle for Virtue: Asceticism in a Modern Secular Society by Archbishop Averky (Taushev)