La batalla por nuestras emociones

The Battle for Our Emotions: How OpenAI, Anthropic, the Christian Tech Right, and the Vatican Use Religious Narratives to Capture the Emotions That Will Shape Humanity's Future in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

This working paper examines how competing actors seeking to shape the future of artificial intelligence rely on religious narrative structures to influence public emotions and perceptions. Drawing on the work of Spinoza, Durkheim, Berger, Girard, Noble, Nussbaum, Damasio, Barrett, and others, the paper analyzes the discourse of OpenAI, Anthropic, the Christian technological right associated with Peter Thiel, and the Vatican.

The central argument is that these actors mobilize different emotions—wonder, serenity, anger, and relief—through recurring mythic frameworks such as paradise, the guardian, the Antichrist, and the Tower of Babel. Although their visions of the future often appear to be in conflict, they share a common underlying structure: each encourages individuals to surrender a key human faculty, whether judgment, vigilance, the identification of enemies, or moral interpretation.

Building on Spinoza's distinction between joyful and sad passions, the paper argues that these narratives often transform seemingly positive emotions into forms of fascination, dependency, resentment, or obedience that reduce human agency. The struggle over artificial intelligence is therefore not only technological, economic, or political; it is also a struggle over emotional sovereignty and the range of futures societies are able to imagine and build.

The paper concludes by proposing an alternative framework based on curiosity, informed trust, active indignation, and active hope, alongside a broader project of "disenchanting" technology in order to restore democratic deliberation over the development and governance of artificial intelligence.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, AI, emotions, narratives, storytelling, public opinion, religion of technology, digital culture, sociology of technology, communication studies, media studies, OpenAI, Anthropic, Vatican, Peter Thiel, Spinoza, technology governance, AI ethics.