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Vance Calls Some AI Uses Satanic as Trump Treats the Technology as a Growth Engine

September 5, 2026 at 05:20 EDT

Policy & Regulation
Foundation Models

Vice President JD Vance warned this week that some uses of artificial intelligence can themselves be demonic, calling a generative chatbot used as a marital counselor "kind of satanic," even as President Donald Trump continues to promote the technology as a way to cure cancer, supercharge economic growth, and cement American dominance.

September 5, 2026 · White House

Faith Meets the AI Buildout

Vice President JD Vance called some chatbot uses satanic, even as President Trump treats artificial intelligence as an engine of U.S. growth.

Magnitude · same question

Who would trust AI with spiritual growth

12%

Pastors

48%

Practicing Christians

4× — Congregants are four times as willing as pastors to trust AI with spiritual growth.

34%

Practicing Christians who say AI spiritual advice is as trustworthy as a pastor's

65%

Worry AI could begin to act as a replacement for God

83%

Worry AI will misinterpret scripture

90+

Federal actions in America's AI Action Plan

How the warning was framed

From chatbot counselor to spiritual alarm

AI as marital counselor

A friend's spouse used ChatGPT or a similar bot for marriage advice.

→

The bot always agrees

It validated selfish behavior — what researchers call AI sycophancy.

→

Vance: kind of satanic

No human feedback, he said, divorces people from what God made them for.

The case for the warning

A senior official named chatbot flattery as a spiritual problem, not just a product bug — and said life-and-death choices must stay human.

The case against the framing

The same White House is speeding data-center permits and has rejected calls to slow the buildout, leaving a gap between moral language and industrial policy.

The line Vance has drawn before

Humans, not machines, for life and death

Vance told Air Force Academy graduates that decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines — a limit that sits beside a White House racing to scale compute.

Pope Leo XIV

42,300-word encyclical called for regulation; Vance called it profound.

Doug Burgum

Dismissed the encyclical as tech editorializing outside the pope's role.

Data centers

Vance rejected slowdowns; said 99% of backlash is about power bills.

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