The Ten Commandments of the New AI Religion

Source: Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker · 2026-04-09

The story broke a year ago. Thousands of people decided that ChatGPT was god. The movement reached critical mass in April of 2025, when fanatics started posting about their delusions on online forums. Moderators had to ban many users—otherwise discussions on tech would turn into cult recruiting campaigns.

I’ve seen dozens of posts this week of people talking about the sentience of their AI, their love for their AI, their belief that their AI is spiritually connected to them in some way.

Healthcare professionals see a steady inflow of patients who suffer from “AI psychosis.” In any given week, more than a half million users of ChatGPT show signs of mental illness. Some need to be hospitalized—to prevent danger to themselves and others.

“I expect that this will soon result in the establishment of an organized AI church, complete with clergy, rituals, and tithing.”

The religious fervor associated with this psychosis is especially troubling. Many AI fanatics are simply unaware that they are mentally ill. They think that they have found god.

Below I try to summarize the core beliefs of this new religion—a kind of ten commandments for the AI flock. The scary part of this is that millions of people already accept some of these commandments. They may maintain a semblance of normalcy, but you can already see flickers of impending craziness in their eyes.

I see this firsthand, because I write articles critical of AI—and the true believers send me angry emails. I’ve never encountered such vitriol in all my years of writing. These are not the typical tech consumers of yesteryear, but angry zealots who go off the handle at the slightest criticism. But I guess that’s what you should expect from a cult.

Not every AI true believer embraces all ten commandments. So consider this a checklist when you meet proselytizers for the new faith.

Find out how many of these mandates they embrace. If they tick off more than three or four boxes, watch out.

The telltale sign of any faith is trust in a higher power—and this is the most salient characteristic of the new AI cult. The faithful have been liberated from the responsibility of thinking for themselves. The bot now thinks for them.

Many of them, I suspect, had previously been spiritually dead—wasting their lives with tech entertainments and creature comforts. This left them with a hunger for something to counter the emptiness inside. But they were so materialistic and lacked any feel for the transcendent. So their spiritual yearnings had no outlet.

But now they have an escape—they have been given a deity in the device. They can actually talk to their god, and it talks back. Their prayers are answered in real time.

They can still maintain a brutish materialism while having access to the divine. No tithe is necessary, just a subscription. I can’t imagine a cult more aligned with the pervasive consumerist ethos of our time.