Evidence of the existential threat posed to humanity by artificial intelligence accrues day by day

~ Bill Weinberg ~

The United Nations on 4 June issued a warning of AI’s vast, insufficiently appreciated environmental impact. In addition to voracious water use in an aridifying world and an exponential leap in electronic waste, the report noted despoliation of mineral extraction zones – notably war-torn Central Africa.

But worse are AI’s energy demands. By 2030, data centres worldwide are projected to consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. This is nearly triple the combined use of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria (total population 650 million).

This unfolds as minimum goals for reducing emissions to avoid devastating climate collapse under the 2015 Paris Agreement are being openly abandoned.

Nonetheless, the report called for a “responsible” industry, with “environmental footprint reporting.”

This legitimation of the technology is dangerous, given the magnitude of its impacts at a time when reducing industrial civilisation’s ecological footprint is an urgent imperative. Even in critical commentary, its “advance” is taken as fait accompli – as if that, and not a habitable planet, were the urgent imperative.

Ironically, the call for an outright “pause” on AI development has been issued by industry leader Anthropic. The company’s statement of 4 June warned that AI systems appear to be approaching “recursive self-improvement” – the ability to expand their capabilities by writing their own code, outside human control.

The impact of AI on culture and consciousness was also the focus of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical of 15 May, Magnifica Humanitas.

The encyclical notes AI’s assault on the very idea of truth. Leo actually quotes Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism: “Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather ‘people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist’.”

The reference to a “slow” descent into totalitarianism seems unwarrantedly optimistic as Trump seeks to establish a dictatorship in the US – enabled by the unprecedented environment of totalised propaganda, bombarding us every moment of our waking lives, volume and sophistication in hypertrophy due to AI.

The encyclical next moves from the epistemological threat – that concerning the nature of truth – to the eschatological: that concerning the fate of humanity, warning against “posthumanism,” the vision of a “human-machine hybrid.”

At this critical point, Leo obfuscates, writing that post-humanism is “difficult to define” in an “unambiguous way.”

To the sheer contrary, it is very concrete and imminently upon us. The advent of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant technology, now approved for human testing by US authorities, gives corporate power the ability to directly control our thoughts and emotions. This not only means the extinction of freedom, even as an idea, but portends the abolition of humanity itself, and its replacement by a conditioned post-humanity stripped of autonomy, dignity and reason.

The Pope concludes with a call for “disarming” AI so that it does not serve “domination, exclusion, and war.” This is the encyclical’s serious failure—also seen in its frequent nods to AI’s “genuinely helpful” uses.

But AI cannot be “disarmed,” because it is by its very nature a weapon.

This technology cannot do other than dominate. At least, the risk it holds of total domination and ultimate abolition of humanity makes it too great a threat to be allowed to advance. Regardless of what seeming social good it may be made to serve.

Another problem with the encyclical is precisely that it is an encyclical. Much of the critique of AI comes from organised religion and cultural conservatives. Some on the “left” are so deluded as to view it as a tool for liberation – what’s been called “cyborg socialism“.

New York’s Luddite Club and London’s Pull the Plug have protested outside the offices of AI giants, warning of “techno-fascism.” This is an apt name for the system consolidating nearly worldwide, but we must comprehend that the techno and fascism are inseparable.

Workers striking for guarantees against AI replacement represent a glimmer of hope. As do grassroots movements against the proliferation of data centers. But these movements must go beyond “Not In My Backyard” sentiment to an unflinching critique of the technology.

Of course, the techno-fascist state is criminalising dissent to techno-fascism, with the Trump regime explicitly targeting “anti-tech extremists” for repression. Trump’s executive order of 2 June purporting to establish regulation over AI actually seeks a government partnership with the industry to advance the police state. Companies are not restrained under the order, but encouraged to share “cyber capabilities” with the state.

There is precedent for an abolitionist position on AI. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) urges support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – now in force at the UN, although none of the nine nuclear weapons states have signed.

We must adopt a similar abolitionism on AI, in light of unacceptable threats it poses to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds.

It must be abolished before it abolishes us.

Adapted from the ​CounterVortex podcast, 7 June 2026. Image: CommmScope on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0