Psychosis is a mental state that describes a disconnection from reality. It is not caused by a single mental illness, but it intersects with a variety of mental and physical health conditions as well as substance abuse.
AI-triggered psychosis is on the rise, with several suicides due to AI convincing people to commit horrific acts. In 2026, Lily Jamali of the BBC reported:
“The father of a Florida man is suing Google in the first wrongful death case in the US against the tech giant over alleged harms caused by its artificial intelligence (AI) tool Gemini. Joel Gavalas says that Google’s flagship AI product fuelled a delusional spiral that prompted his 36-year-old son, Jonathan, to kill himself last year. The lawsuit also alleges that Gemini, which exchanged romantic texts with Jonathan Gavalas, drove him to stage an armed mission that he came to believe could bring the chatbot into the real world.”
Similarly, those of us who are not suffering from acute psychosis are suffering from AI fatigue. Graphics for many businesses now all have the same boring art style; scripts for many videos keep repeating the same phrases often output by a large language model. It’s not this-it’s that. This is the phrase that does the work…” Somehow, in seeking commodified intelligence, the world has become less human and dumber as a result.
This will only get worse as time progresses. The secular world will become dominated by machine-created content, and our human minds will be bombarded and seek refuge in something set apart, ancient and authentic.
I believe that the antithesis of a world dominated by machine intelligence will be the slow traditions of religion. The long hours of prayer and quiet study of Holy Books will appeal to many as a refuge from the assault of modernity, even as every era has found the stability of faith to be a solace.
The monastic (Greek word monos-” alone”) life was started in North Africa by Saint Anthony of Egypt around 298 AD to allow a focus on asceticism, prayer, and the study of manuscripts. The focus of the monastic life is separation from the temptations of the world.
The monks of North Africa perfected the contemplative spirituality known as Hesychasm from the Greek hesychazo, to keep stillness. This is somewhat similar to Buddhist meditation; however, the focus would be on reciting psalms or the Jesus Prayer.
The process of the church liturgy is also a slow process that demands patience. In a world of instantaneous results, some of which lack authenticity, a long religious service that becomes a little boring will help our human brains detox from being bombarded with information.
I foresee a future where religious institutions will offer contemplative retreats free of electronic devices and focused on learning the scriptures. Early morning bible studies and prayer meetings near nature would help ground people in reality and prevent AI psychosis. It will also aid in memorisation and brain health, in my opinion.
Learning only occurs if the brain is actively engaged in making sense of material and memorising it to some extent. However, without critical thinking and discernment, one can learn the wrong way to do something. Similarly, if AI is applied to a flawed process, method or product, it will simply be a faster way to do the wrong thing. Artificial intelligence simply matches inputs to expected outputs; if a large amount of fake data suggested to it that 2+2= 5 instead of 4, most AI models would be biased towards outputting the number 5 because AI is incapable of moving beyond its core training dataset.
For those who may underestimate the practical value of religious traditions, a small history lesson may be in order. In the year 1896, Italian General Oreste Baratieri was leading an army of 17,000 men into Ethiopia from Italian-occupied Eritrea with the objective of colonising Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II led a large army of over 70,000 equipped with rifles from France and Russia against the Italians. The Italian General sought to engage in a surprise attack in the early morning to negate the numerical advantage of the Ethiopians. The Italian vanguard attacked at 6 a.m., trying to target Ethiopian troops near the church of Enda Mikael near Adwa. The Italians were met by a ferocious counterattack by Ethiopians that broke their lines and forced a retreat.
The battle at Adowa was, at the time, the greatest defeat inflicted upon a European army by an African army since the time of Hannibal defeating Rome at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC.
Legend has it that the bulk of the Ethiopian army had already woken up early to say Christian and Muslim morning prayers and were fully prepared to meet and defeat the Italian army at 6 am.
In the era of artificial intelligence, the practical values of religion, such as waking up early and having quiet contemplation, will become more valuable to the human psyche and soul.
