Earlier this year, leading technologists at the AI frontier turned for guidance to a devout Orthodox Christian figure—Fyodor Dostoevsky. A Silicon Valley book club tackled his notoriously challenging novel “Demons” (also known as “The Possessed”), followed by an anonymous writer publishing an extraordinarily lengthy essay interpreting the work’s premonitions of human beings falling into falsely illuminated fanaticism. The author identified Dostoevsky as a warning for those building artificial intelligence.
The essay argues that when technique and intelligence are severed from disciplined moral purpose, they become hollow and ultimately self-destructive. Orthodox Christianity, the writer contends, stands in direct opposition to posthumanist ideologies increasingly shaping tech’s spiritual landscape—the latter envisioning disembodied intellects mastering existence, while Orthodoxy calls for embodied intelligence to cleanse the heart so that the Holy Spirit might dwell there.
The anonymous writer drew an analogy from the Gospel account of the Gadarene swine: Christ expelled demons, permitting them to enter a herd of pigs that rushed into destruction. The townspeople, rather than embracing deliverance, begged Christ to leave as if nothing had occurred. The essay concludes with the assertions that “demons are not external enemies but our own capacities turned against us” and that “they must possess us fully” before healing can take place.
