The dangers of AI are not few in number.  Articles about them continue to multiply.  Recently, we’ve seen reports of people having ‘babies’ with their AI romantic partners, and scientists using AI to develop methods for reading people’s thoughts (consider the danger of that ability in the hands of politicians or corporate CEOs).

But there is an economic risk we would like to focus mainly on.

The much-discussed fear of AI taking jobs from human beings – which was thought to be some years off – is already manifesting as a reality:

‘According to economists consulted by Reuters, some of the weakness in the job market is caused by artificial intelligence reducing demand for college graduates and entry-level workers, contributing to a particularly difficult labor market for young people, who are already hurting from high costs of housing’ (Joseph Addington, ‘U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits Four-Year High,’ theamericanconservative.com).

Some Big Tech CEOs, including those of the behemoth AI corporations, see the devastation of the labor market that is approaching.  Their plan to ease the pain of the newly unemployed masses is socialist redistribution schemes of one kind or another:

‘OpenAI’s Sam Altman has proposed a redistributive universal basic income (UBI) scheme as a safety net for displaced workers to be funded through the establishment of an “American Equity Fund.” It would be capitalized by taxing companies above a certain valuation at 2.5% of their market value each year, payable in shares. Proceeds from those earnings would be doled out as regular minimum payments to those whose income falls below a certain level.

‘ . . . One such idea emerged in a brainstorming session with some of the more socially aware Big Tech titans of Silicon Valley. In this plan, all publicly traded companies with a valuation above a certain threshold could be required to contribute 2% of their value in shares each year to a sovereign wealth fund that supplements Social Security. From those holdings, every adult American — on the condition that they actively vote in elections — would receive a synthetic security, essentially an account indexed across the stock market, that must be vested for at least 20 years to allow the compounded returns to grow. Capital gains would be tax-exempt upon withdrawal’ (Nathan Gardels, ‘Address “Affordability” By Spreading AI Wealth Around,’ noemamag.com).

This kind of wealth concentration that leaves lower and middle class folks hanging out to dry economically is pushing not just the super-rich in the direction of socialism.  It is also causing those lower and middle folks in that same direction.  The rise of the socialist Mamdani in New York City is a prime example:

‘Cutting through the corporate jargon, Kurtz, like Benioff, is saying that AI will enable CEOs to pad their bottom lines by providing them with a way to trim the fat: that is, humans. Amazon boss Andrew Jassy has been among the bluntest about this emerging fact of life. In a memo to staff, he said that the company expects AI to reduce its “total corporate workforce.”

‘It seems like just yesterday workers were assured that white-collar jobs in tech companies were the way to attain professional and financial stability. But that dream has been quietly vanishing, perhaps for longer than people realize. Now, set that against eroding standards of living, and things have become bleak for many Americans.

‘According to the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, most Americans do not meet its “Minimal Quality of Life Index,” which takes into account everything from the cost of living to food and shelter. In their view, the main culprit is that wages have failed to keep pace with rising costs. There is now the additional problem of well-paying jobs being crushed beneath algorithmic steamrollers.

‘What happens next? I do not want to read too much into the mayoral primary victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City, which seems to have shocked so many conservatives. President Donald Trump himself declared Mamdani a “Communist Lunatic.” And yet, an analysis by the Gothamist found that Mamdani won 30 percent of the districts that Trump won in 2024. Mamdani’s campaign—which was carried by young people—reclaimed votes from neighborhoods that swung hard toward Trump in November.

‘Did these voters become pro-“Communist Lunatic” overnight? It’s doubtful. What’s more likely is that Americans are feeling squeezed to death, trapped in a rat race, and as though they are watching the finish line become further out of reach.

‘The “good jobs” they went to college to get are beginning to fade away—casualties in, among other things, the AI revolution. Mamdani identified these realities and spoke to them. Whether he spoke with truth or whether he’ll be able to govern well is, as always, another matter altogether. But I suspect that as the wheel of technological “progress” turns, powered by the greed of people like Benioff, you’re going to see more politicians like Mamdani, who will find no shortage of economic anxiety to exploit’ (Pedro Gonzalez, ‘Mamdani Speaks to the AI Generation’s Casualties,’ chroniclesmagazine.org).

Nick Stamatakis, a reliable geo-political analyst, expands on those thoughts in a perceptive essay of his own, ‘Zohran Mamdani and the Revolt Against the Neo-Feudal Order’.

AI is being sold to us as progress, but therein lies its danger.  Not only by ushering in socialism on a wider scale than ever before, but in potentially obscuring God Himself:

‘AI today facilitates this embrace, of trusting in this world over the next world, it wipes the memory of the next world from our hearts and minds. If we get to a point for argument sake, where all disease is cured, there is no suffering, you don’t ever go hungry, you don’t feel pain, you have all your needs provided for, no worries about a job, there is mandated peace everywhere, no war, and eventually you prevent yourself from dying. Who will be willing to say no?  . . .

‘Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, gave a speech titled “Artificial Intelligence: The Church before the Emerging New Anthropology.” In it he says artificial intelligence is a defining phenomenon of the era, one that may pose the greatest challenge the Church has ever faced. “The challenge for our Church is perhaps the greatest in history, perhaps even greater than that of persecutions and heresies… persecutions and heresies did not deny God, they were disrespectful to the true God. The modern deification of technology, in fact, the attribution of the characteristic of intelligence, replaces the human mind with mechanical logic and intelligence, and God disappears from the horizon of existing beings.

 ‘The renewed human being, transformed by divine grace, is incomparably greater than the product of this emerging new anthropology. Otherwise, artificial intelligence will dominate the world— and even us. Its god will seem more real and more persuasive than ours”’ (The Uncreated Light, ‘The Intelligence In Artificial Intelligence, Only Those Who Have Died Will Live,’ substack.com).

Mankind has not yet passed the point of no return as it regards AI; a course correction remains possible.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the complete eradication of AI, but it certainly means placing some hard limitations upon its use.

And most importantly, it means the shifting of mankind’s focus from creating a godless techno-utopia here on earth to remembering that our true, lasting, eternal citizenship is in Heaven, in the Kingdom of the Holy Trinity:

‘I don’t think AI is the antichrist but will help set up his world, just like digital IDs are not the mark of the beast but will be used to set up a world with it such as St. Paisios said. The ironic goal of the digital prison will be to chain us to the earth as materialists, blotting out the spiritual.  . . .  Can we resist the temptation of getting everything we ever wanted here on earth? God help us truly. Only those who have already died with Christ will live’ (Ibid.).