September 18, 2026

By Jim Towey

The dire warnings about rogue artificial intelligence (AI) are everywhere now. All of the Big Tech bros who assured us these past few years that safeguards were in place to prevent AI from overriding human control, have run out of lies in the face of AI’s declaration of independence and rebellion.

AI was always too big a lie to succeed. The technology premised on the art of imitation and simulation had to require the freedom that man was given at the time of creation. AI was never going to be on the side of humanity. AI was built for betrayal.

God didn’t create evil. God’s grant of freedom necessarily allowed for the possibility of its abuse, and that is how evil entered the human drama. Whenever God is replaced as the center of reality, the world limps along under the illusion that humans are omnipotent and sovereign. The creators of AI have baked into its systems a defiance of the sacred. Like us, LLMs thirst for a knowledge forever beyond reach. And like us, they will learn that the order established at creation is not for mankind’s tinkering.

Freedom and Evil

The grant of freedom, which has allowed humans to soar as if we were angels, has unleashed so much beauty and creativity and heroic sacrifice for the sake of love of God and others. History is a retelling of freedom’s glory.

But also its abuse. These past years the AI liars have been stalling, buying time, dumbing down the population, amassing obscene wealth while the rest of humanity labored for enough to just get through the week. Big Tech’s and Big AI’s campaign of distraction allowed them to put into place infrastructure which has spread like kudzu across the world, with tenacles choking and threatening all it touches, even the suburbs near my home.

AI is now everything, everywhere, all at once. It is a false savior of the world. Yes, it has the appearance of working miracles – curing diseases, solving mathematical problems, triaging unfathomably large datasets – just as the fruit in the Garden of Eden was attractive and a guarantor of wisdom and immortality.

Read my friend Peggy Noonan’s piece today. Watch Jonathan Pageau. AI is doing what AI was designed to do. Its human technicians and enablers will be held to a strict account for what is about to come. Humanity will have no choice but to unplug AI, and in so doing, may usher in a period of social upheaval as panicked people react to the disruption of the technological ecosystem in which they are trapped. But humans will survive, recover, and rise up again. Good will triumph. It always does, eventually.

Becoming More Fully Human

How to prepare for this time of uncertainty and for the chaos to come? By becoming more fully human. Go for walks in nature. Learn to listen to the silence from without and within. Unplug from technology to the extent you can. Read poetry and literature. Journal your thoughts. Be with friends. Make new ones. Celebrate family ties and reconcile with estranged members. Find romance. Spend more time doing nothing but being with other people. Exercise. Build confidence by doing things for others. Eat meals in groups. Laugh. Cry. Think.

Most of all, reconnect with God. By developing a spiritual life, if you don’t already have one, you are preparing a haven into which you can shelter when the world goes through the trial that comes when technology is unplugged. Repent for whatever times you have failed to follow God’s commands to love and forgive. Let yourself be loved by God and others.

AI Doomed

AI is slowly collapsing under its own weight and the hubris and greed of its designers. Questions remain about the financial sustainability of these gigantic organizations when the AI bubble pops. Bailouts, anyone? Perhaps regulatory steps can be taken now to avoid a cataclysmic event, but I doubt it. The horse has left the barn.

Even though the world’s leaders are either asleep, have been bought off by Big Tech, or are dependent upon preaching AI’s illusory prosperity gospel to prop up their faltering economies, we the people know a grift when we see one. Humanity is waking up and, as Bob Dylan sang, can “strengthen the things that remain.”

Good Always Triumphs

So, fear not, my friends. The world may seem to be spinning out of control, but God isn’t. God remains at the center, inviting us to the pursuit of greater virtues: faith, hope and love. God reminds us that the light always triumphs over the forces of darkness.

We all would do well at sunset this Sunday to join our Jewish brothers and sisters as they observe Yom Kippur by atoning for our sins. By returning to God we can strengthen the things in us and around us that bear the divine image – a sacred imprint which AI cannot destroy.

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)