on Mar 16, 2026 02:20 am
Amy Kazmin, Reporter – Financial Times (U.K.)
Stephan: Here you see what the AI billionaires intend: unregulated AI development. Billionaire Thiel argues against the regulation of AI in religious terms, saying it is the manifestation of the antichrist. Pope Leo in contrast, passionately argues AI must be regulated by humans. Synchronistically, last night I finished watching a Netflix series, Travelers, about a desperate failing future in which humanity is ruled by AI, and a villainous ( from AI’s perspective) group, the Faction, wants humanity to be governed by humans. My personal view is that if there is not strong regulation of AI very soon, it won’t be possible, and humanity will become like the Traveler series.
Peter Thiel’s lecture series is shrouded in secrecy, with both the guest list and venue not made public. Credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg
US tech billionaire and Maga donor Peter Thiel is starting a series of closed-door lectures about the antichrist in Rome on Sunday, putting him on collision course with Pope Leo XIV, the Catholic Church’s first American pontiff.
Thiel, the founder of data intelligence company Palantir Technologies — the Pentagon contractor whose AI systems are being used in the US and Israeli attack on Iran — is preoccupied with the risk of a “one-world, totalitarian state” obstructing scientific and technological progress. He depicts those who lobby for tech regulation as harbingers of the antichrist.
“The way the antichrist would take over the world is, you talk about Armageddon nonstop,” Thiel told the New York Times last year. “You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate . . . The thing that has political resonance is: we need to stop science, we need to just say ‘stop’ to this.”
Thiel’s views […]