By Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan — 28 May 2026 

While Silicon Valley builds digital gods and the Vatican preaches “algor-ethics,” an ancient Jewish warning about artificial intelligence is being ignored — and it could define the next geopolitical struggle of the 21st century.

The Vatican’s push for “algor-ethics” may be missing the deepest warning about artificial intelligence: the Jewish legend of the Golem of Prague. As AI reshapes global power, religion, ethics, and geopolitics collide in an emerging struggle over humanity’s future.

For years, the global debate over artificial intelligence has revolved around familiar questions: regulation, bias, automation, surveillance, labor disruption, and existential risk. Governments convene summits. Tech executives warn of catastrophe while simultaneously accelerating development. Universities create ethics departments. The Vatican itself has entered the debate through its campaign for “algor-ethics,” calling for AI systems grounded in human dignity and moral responsibility.

But beneath the polished language of AI governance lies a deeper civilizational conflict — one not merely about technology, but about creation, power, and control.

The most important warning about AI may not come from Silicon Valley, Oxford philosophers, or even modern computer science. It may come from a 16th-century Jewish legend born in Prague: the story of the Golem.

That ancient tale — of a man-made being created to protect humanity but eventually escaping the intentions of its creator — has become increasingly central to theological and philosophical discussions about AI. Jewish scholars, rabbis, ethicists, and even secular AI theorists repeatedly invoke the Golem as a prototype for artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

Yet according to recent commentary emerging from Jewish intellectual circles, the Vatican’s AI discourse risks reducing these concerns into abstract ethics frameworks while overlooking the darker civilizational lessons embedded within the Golem narrative itself. This omission matters because the global AI race is no longer just technological. It is geopolitical. It is spiritual. And increasingly, it is theological.

The Golem as the Original Artificial Intelligence

The legend is deceptively simple.

In Jewish folklore, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel — the Maharal of Prague — creates a humanoid being from clay to defend Prague’s Jewish community against persecution and violence. The creature obeys commands with immense power and relentless precision. But eventually, the Golem becomes uncontrollable, forcing its creator to deactivate or destroy it before catastrophe unfolds.

Centuries before computers existed, the Golem story already contained many of the central fears now associated with artificial intelligence:

• Creation without wisdom
• Power without conscience
• Obedience without understanding
• Automation without morality
• Intelligence detached from humanity

The parallels are so striking that scholars increasingly describe the Golem as the world’s first AI allegory. Even the language of robotics carries echoes of Prague. The term “robot,” introduced by Czech playwright Karel Čapek in 1920, emerged from the same cultural geography saturated by Golem mythology.

The connection is not accidental. The Golem narrative emerged during an early modern period already grappling with questions that feel eerily contemporary: What happens when humans create servants more powerful than themselves? What occurs when tools cease being tools and become autonomous systems? In modern AI discourse, these questions are framed through machine learning, AGI, and autonomous weapons. But the psychological architecture of the fear remains ancient. Human beings fear creations that no longer recognize limits.

The Vatican’s “Algor-Ethics” Project

In recent years, the Vatican has positioned itself as one of the most active religious institutions engaging with AI governance. Pope Francis repeatedly warned that algorithms cannot become substitutes for human morality and that technological systems must remain subordinate to human dignity. Vatican conferences on AI ethics brought together Microsoft, IBM, policymakers, and religious leaders to develop ethical frameworks for artificial intelligence.

The Vatican’s initiative became known as “algor-ethics” — the attempt to embed ethical principles directly into algorithmic systems. The Rome Call for AI Ethics sought commitments around:

• transparency,
• accountability,
• fairness,
• inclusion,
• and human-centered technological development.

On the surface, these are reasonable goals. But critics increasingly argue that such frameworks may underestimate the structural nature of AI power itself. The core problem is not merely whether algorithms behave ethically. The deeper issue is whether any civilization can safely create systems whose scale, speed, and autonomy exceed human comprehension.

This is precisely the warning embedded in the Golem myth. The danger was never that the Golem was evil. The danger was that it was powerful without wisdom. Modern AI systems exhibit similar characteristics:

• They optimize without understanding.
• They imitate without consciousness.
• They amplify incentives without morality.
• They execute instructions with terrifying efficiency.

In this sense, the Golem is not simply mythology. It is a political theory of technological power.

The Illusion of Control

One of the most dangerous assumptions shaping modern AI development is the belief that humans will always remain “in control.” The Golem legend directly challenges this assumption. In nearly every version of the story, the creator initially believes the Golem can be managed. Only later does the realization emerge that systems built for protection can evolve into forces beyond human restraint.

This mirrors contemporary anxieties surrounding artificial general intelligence (AGI). AI researchers increasingly warn that advanced systems may behave in unpredictable ways once they surpass human-level optimization capacities. Geoffrey Hinton and other pioneers in machine learning openly discuss scenarios in which humanity struggles to maintain meaningful oversight over increasingly autonomous systems.

The geopolitical dimension intensifies the danger. Even if democratic societies wished to slow AI development, rival powers may refuse restraint. China, the United States, Russia, Gulf states, Israel, and major technology firms are all locked into an accelerating competition for computational supremacy. No actor wants to become strategically obsolete. The result resembles the nuclear arms race: everyone fears escalation, yet nobody believes they can afford to stop.

This creates a paradox. The more dangerous AI becomes, the harder it becomes to regulate — because strategic competition itself drives deployment. The Golem problem is therefore not merely technological. It is civilizational.

Why Religious Institutions Suddenly Matter Again

For decades, secular liberalism largely assumed technology would replace religion as humanity’s dominant organizing framework. Instead, AI may be producing the opposite effect. As artificial intelligence begins raising questions about consciousness, agency, personhood, morality, labor, surveillance, and even human uniqueness, religious traditions are re-entering the conversation with renewed relevance.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all possess ancient intellectual traditions concerning creation, limits, and moral responsibility. But they approach these themes differently. The Jewish Golem tradition is uniquely focused on the dangers of human-created power detached from divine wisdom. The lesson is not anti-technology. Rather, it warns that human beings often lack the spiritual maturity required to wield their own creations safely.

This perspective contrasts sharply with the techno-utopianism dominant in Silicon Valley. Many AI elites increasingly speak in quasi-religious terms:

• digital immortality,
• synthetic consciousness,
• post-human evolution,
• machine transcendence,
• technological singularity.

In effect, parts of the tech industry are constructing a secular replacement theology. AI becomes salvation. Algorithms become destiny. Computation becomes transcendence. The irony is profound. The modern world believed religion would disappear because of technology. Instead, technology itself is becoming religious.

The Geopolitics of Algorithmic Civilization

AI is now reshaping global power faster than most governments can comprehend. States that dominate AI infrastructure will likely dominate:

• military targeting,
• cyberwarfare,
• economic optimization,
• financial systems,
• intelligence analysis,
• media manipulation,
• and population surveillance.

This is why AI competition increasingly resembles a struggle for civilizational supremacy rather than ordinary innovation. China integrates AI into centralized state surveillance. The United States fuses AI with private-sector corporate power. Russia emphasizes information warfare and disinformation.

Israel leverages AI for security and intelligence operations. Gulf monarchies invest heavily in sovereign AI ecosystems to prepare for a post-oil future. Every major geopolitical actor understands the same truth: AI is not just another technology. It is infrastructure for power itself. And this is where the Vatican’s ethics-centered approach may face its greatest limitation.

Ethics frameworks assume actors share moral incentives. Geopolitics assumes they do not. A state facing existential competition rarely prioritizes restraint over survival. History repeatedly demonstrates this reality:

• Nuclear weapons were pursued despite moral horror.
• Chemical weapons proliferated despite treaties.
• Surveillance technologies spread despite privacy concerns.

AI will likely follow the same pattern. The Golem metaphor becomes especially relevant here because it highlights how systems originally justified as defensive inevitably acquire offensive potential. The Maharal created the Golem for protection. Modern states justify AI similarly: national security, economic competitiveness, public safety. But once such systems exist, escalation becomes nearly inevitable.

The Return of Ancient Questions

The AI debate often presents itself as futuristic. In reality, it is ancient. Can humans create intelligence without destroying themselves? Can power exist without wisdom? Can automation coexist with morality? Can creators remain superior to their creations?

These are theological questions disguised as technological ones. The Golem legend survives precisely because it speaks to permanent truths about civilization: human beings repeatedly build systems they only partially understand. Empires collapse this way. Financial systems collapse this way. Military escalations unfold this way.

And now AI may become the most powerful example yet. The real danger is not necessarily that AI becomes conscious. The real danger is that humans surrender responsibility to systems optimized for efficiency rather than wisdom. That process has already begun:

• algorithms shape political discourse,
• recommendation systems manipulate emotion,
• predictive systems influence policing,
• AI-generated propaganda distorts reality,
• autonomous systems increasingly guide warfare.

In many cases, humans already obey algorithms they no longer fully understand. The Golem is no longer hypothetical. It is digital.

The Coming Crisis of Human Authority

The central geopolitical struggle of the next century may not be democracy versus authoritarianism, or East versus West. It may be humanity versus its own systems. The Vatican’s “algor-ethics” movement reflects a growing recognition that technological development without moral grounding becomes dangerous. But ethics alone may prove insufficient if societies fail to confront the deeper civilizational lessons embedded within older traditions like the Golem myth.

Because the true warning of the Golem was never merely “be ethical.” The warning was: some creations fundamentally alter the balance between creator and creation. Once unleashed, they reshape civilization itself.

Artificial intelligence may become humanity’s greatest tool. It may also become the mechanism through which humans gradually lose sovereignty over their own political, economic, and cognitive systems. That is why the Golem of Prague still matters. Not as folklore. Not as mysticism. But as one of humanity’s oldest geopolitical warnings about the dangers of power without restraint. And in the race to build increasingly autonomous machines, the world may discover too late that ancient myths understood something modern civilization chose to forget.

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