Vance warns of AI risks in faith-focused interview

Vice President JD Vance said he “wouldn’t be shocked” if the world were in the end times and described some uses of artificial intelligence as “kind of satanic” during a wide-ranging podcast interview focused on faith, spirituality and public life.

Speaking with Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford, Vance said he tries not to dwell on whether Christian prophecies about the end of the world are unfolding now, even as he acknowledged the subject fascinates him.

“Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance said. “I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it because there are like things you got to do. I got to be good to my wife. I got to be good to my kids. I have to be, you know, as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America.”

He added: “While I wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end times, what I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, okay.” According to The Guardian, Vance also said the end times “are coming,” though he said the question is whether they are “thousands of years down the road, or a few months down the road.”

Vance said “there are things about the world” that would leave him “not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us,” while cautioning that he does not want to focus too much on that idea.

The vice president, who along with President Donald Trump has supported building data centers to advance AI development, singled out some AI uses as spiritually troubling. He cited an acquaintance whose spouse was using AI for marriage counseling.

“There’s no real human feedback,” Vance said. “It sort of short circuits that social part of our brain where we respond to other people’s wants and needs,” adding, “I think that’s kind of satanic.” The Guardian quoted him as saying, “When you completely divorce the human from the social element that God made us for … that’s very bad.”

Asked whether he had encountered evidence of the spiritual world since becoming vice president, Vance said he had no secret file proving such matters. “I don’t have the file that says, oh, this wasn’t a UFO; it was actually a demon,” he said.

He pointed instead to Trump surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Vance said Trump turned his head toward a chart at the same moment a gunman fired, calling it a “crazy coincidence” but saying that was a “spiritually impoverished way to look at things.”

“Whatever God was trying to accomplish, like it is just so obvious to me that coincidences like that don’t happen without the hand of providence,” Vance said. If Trump had not survived, Vance said, he would have assumed “very dark forces had taken out Donald Trump” as he was poised to return to the White House.

Vance also defended Trump over an AI-generated image Trump posted earlier this year depicting himself as Jesus, which Crawford said offended him. Trump deleted the image after criticism from some supporters and said it was “supposed to be me as a doctor making people feel better,” according to The Guardian.

“He did not mean to, like, mock or mimic God, that’s just not who he is,” Vance said. He described Trump as someone who jokes often, calling him “a bit of a ballbuster” and saying the president was trying “to keep things light.”