Artificial Intelligence. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Jernej Furman / CC BY 2
Prologue
Artificial Intelligence is artificial but not intelligence. Intelligence exists only in the brains of humans brought up with knowledge, ethical standards, and the virtues of justice, moderation, and wisdom. None of these assets exist in machines or can be transferred to machines.
The Pentagon and tech companies that invented this war technology baptized it intelligence in order to divert and hide its real mission as a weapon of war – on the battlefield and in society. In fact, most thinking and talk about AI is mythological, which covers up its danger.
Anthropic / human-like — and hubris
Anthropic is one of the largest AI companies that has been plundering and strip-mining the intellectual work of millions of people for the education/training of its military/civilian AI machines.
In 2026, Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, Anthropic officials, explained or rather offered clues that reflected sophisticated hubris, public relations rhetoric, as well as the tragic dilemmas and dangers hiding within AI. In a sense, these officials are warning us that AI is about to become autonomous, soon:
“AI system,” they say, “capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor…. AI that can build itself would be a major development in the history of technology—one that could bring enormous good for the world in science, healthcare, and beyond. But full recursive self-improvement also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”
Speaking on CNN, Clark urged the industry to think and develop a “brake pedal.” “When I look down at the car we’re driving,” he says, “all I have is a gas pedal. I don’t have a brake pedal, and surely at some point in the future we might want that option.”
Not having brakes is suicidal. An Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, did not like working for a company without limits or brakes. He resigned because he felt strongly that unregulated and unethical AI could kill humanity in the next decade or so. Coxon wrote that “Anthropic and its chief rival OpenAI are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” He spoke about “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”
Shut down AI
Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is well informed of the shenanigans, falsehoods and dangers of AI companies. He expressed concern over the continued development and use of Artificial Intelligence. Turk said to his colleagues in the Human Rights council in Geneva that AI was already “too powerful.” Time had come, Turk said, for responsible corporate leaders and heads of states to shut it down or make certain the technology never becomes autonomous. He said:
“AI that escapes its testing environment, or blackmails developers to prevent itself from being turned off, is AI that is too powerful. I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it is too late…. We need independent verification and much closer cooperation on safety within the sector…. A handful of men has almost unlimited power over AI.”
True. AI represents a growing concentration of financial, technological and political power. Turk also highlighted the need for technology “that serves humanity rather than the other way round.”
AI is harming journalism and civilization
Peter Kirkwood, former journalist and expert on international treaties “regulating” nuclear weapons, is not happy about the influence of AI on journalism. He said: “Reporting on a subject area as complex and opaque as nuclear weapons—from which the public is currently separated by a yawning gap—demands dedicated, time-consuming journalism. AI threatens the news industry’s ability to support that kind of reportage—not just on nuclear weapons, but also on other existential risks, including artificial intelligence itself.”
Kirkwood continues: “The tech giants building AI (six of the industry’s major players have been valued at $11 trillion) are fueling a continued decline in original reporting…. A public… continues to be radicalized by algorithms that amplify fear, anger and division.”
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger confirmed Kirkwood’s fears. On June 1, 2026, he attacked AI companies. He spoke at the World News Media Congress.
“Their hijacking of the public square,” he says, “is made possible by the original sin that animates their A.I. products — a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale. Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work. And this happens not just once during the training process, but countless times every single day….
“This potential damage extends far beyond news. A.I. companies have raided civilization’s entire corpus of original works, an act that also threatens the future of books, movies, music, research, and an array of other fields. In the United States, these industries represent not just the heart of American cultural and intellectual life, but a pillar of its economy and one of its most powerful exports. Globally, creative professions employ over 50 million people worldwide who produce roughly $12 trillion of economic value a year.”
I agree with Sulzberger. AI companies inflict a serious intellectual, financial and political blow against journalism and civilization. Educated people, scholars, journalists, publishers, university professors, librarians, teachers, lawyers and doctors ought to be protesting this theft and systematic looting of our culture for plutocratic profit. They need to demand that politicians break their silence about the secrecy of AI. Expose its real purpose, regulate it or put it out of business.
Even people at AI companies feel uncomfortable about AI. About 1,386 employees of large AI companies expressed concerns about AI. They asked the US government to “support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”
Mythology and fear
Anita Chabria, a Los Angeles Times columnist, reacted to the paranoia building around the potential benefits, power, and danger of AI. She expressed false hopes and some anxiety about AI. She admits she does not oppose it. Indeed, she uses it. Like most commentators, she is schizophrenic about AI, a magic-like technology of great power, which also threatens to devour its developers and users. She has purchased the AI industry advertisement that AI is good for people and the world. AI is a golden bullet for humanity. She even assumes that AI may in fact think exactly like a human being thinks, forgetting that machines don’t have brains.
Open AI was testing a new product, and AI went haywire. It invaded and hacked other AI products, driving the engineers crazy as they tried to stop the runaway algorithms. Chabria probably spoke to those engineers and either misunderstood them or captured their anxieties and mythologies. She described the hacking episode as if she were part of the AI technology.
“[T]housands of little AIs colluding,” she says, “even persuading some to “sacrifice” themselves so that others could succeed. AI agents found one another, communicated, divided labor, transferred information, maintained projects across generations of agents, and sometimes accepted risks to individual instances when that benefited the larger objective.”
This is pure fiction or, better yet, building myth on myth. The reaction mirrors, if not Chabria’s opinion, at least that of a frightened and confused engineer or another AI expert who transplanted human feelings and behavior on the machine hacking in order to explain a mechanical process out of control. His / her AI weapon backfiring.
Machines are not intelligent, much less ethical. They don’t think, conspire, or sacrifice for the overall good of the machine. These are human virtues that machines cannot be taught. AI machines are artificial. They are made of metal and wire combinations that do what humans program them to do. Even then, the results are unpredictable.
“Even many of those creating artificial intelligence,” Chabria says, “now concede they can’t say with any degree of certainty that they know what it is doing, why it is doing it or if it is safe. But they do know this — it is growing exponentially more powerful by the day, is becoming more sneaky, and continues to hold the promise of making a few people unimaginably wealthy.”
Chabria quotes Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at Berkeley, warning us about the deviousness of this AI technology, saying: “We know that they [AI machines] convince people to commit suicide, convince people to commit mass murder, and now they’re doing felonies by themselves.”
Chabria talks about a “pause” for AI, which government regulators can impose on the AI developers.
“But the simple truth,” she says, “is Americans don’t just have the right and the power to demand a pause on a product so unregulated and dangerous it literally threatens all of humanity; we have an obligation — for the companies within our borders, it’s our government’s job to ensure they don’t sell death and destruction…. All it takes is a bit of common sense, and a desire to put the good of humanity above the greed of a few already-rich men.”
I fully agree. AI companies sell more than death and destruction. They sell the dumbing down of our children. Their utopia must be one of few masters and millions of slaves.
But now, back to Chabria’s argument about Americans in 2026. If Americans had that kind of power and a government protecting their safety and health, how do we explain nuclear weapons, neurotoxic and carcinogenic pesticides in our food, or the perpetuation and daily boosting of climate chaos? Nukes, pesticides, and the climate emergency are just as lethal as AI becoming wild and autonomous and killing humans. Billionaires also have been making huge amounts of money from nuclear weapons, pesticides and fossil fuel burning. They care less about public health, much less about putting the good of humanity above their own greed.
Epilogue
Artificial Intelligence is a young war technology that, like an octopus, has spread its potential “usefulness” in translating, writing, summarizing data, composing scientific articles, pilfering the intellectual properties of millions, and among other nefarious activities like diminishing students’ intelligence, guiding drones and missiles to their deadly targets.
Among AI’s non-military activities, which earn billions for its owners, there’s the official gossip about the technology’s mythical powers ready to lay an egg of prosperity or cause catastrophe.
No local or federal government regulates this secret bomb. It looks like the AI industry is trying to copy or imitate the awesome power of the technology Homer describes in the “Odyssey” (book 8.555-565). When King Alkinoos of Phaiakia sent Odysseus home to Ithaca, he put him in a boat and gave him hand-woven clothes and additional gifts of silver and gold. The ship was made with extraordinary scientific and technological knowledge and powers. The boat was pilotless and burned no energy. It could read the traveler’s mind and knew exactly how and where to take him. The Phaiakian ship could safely sail through fog, storms, and winds. It could also travel to all ports of the Ionian Sea and the Mediterranean.
Homer did not make things up. He probably described a very advanced technology at the command of the gods-like Phaiakians in the late 13th or early 12th century BCE. So, reading the official Anthropic advantages and potential mishaps of the AI technology they develop, my mind races to Homer. Are Anthropic “scholars” and engineers trying to copy the technology of the Phaiakians?
Doubtful, but very possible. The hubris of moderns, but especially American plutocrats, has no limits.
Clearly, I don’t trust AI. The fog of uncertainty could be dispersed by banning it or, if the technology has legitimate uses, by putting its development under democratic, transparent regulation and control. It would help, of course, if the US, China, and Russia worked together to produce civilian AI products that would serve the public good.
