On a recent solo episode of ‘This Past Weekend’, Theo Von launched into a passionate rant about artificial intelligence after a caller raised concerns about a proposed data center being built near the Nashville Zoo and an elementary school.
Von wasted no time making his feelings clear.
“On behalf of everybody that’s human and has a heart, f*** AI, bro,” he said. “I don’t have any friends that are ever like, ‘Hey, AI, what? How’s AI?’ Nobody’s doing that. We’re already fine. We can already order our food fast enough. We can already watch a movie if we want on our phone. Like we don’t need anything else. I don’t know who else needs more of this.”
From there, Von shifted into a theory about what he believes is driving the rapid expansion of data centers and technology infrastructure.
“I really believe it,” he said. “I believe that some people know how to live forever. They’ve cracked the code.”
According to Von, that possibility would require tighter control over the rest of society.
“And so suddenly they have to put the rest of us, they have to lock us down,” he noted. “Because if everybody finds out about it, then everybody’s going to be able to do it.”
He then connected that idea to AI, surveillance technology, and the collection of personal data.
He continued, “I believe this is my theory, that it’s all going to be locked in with Flock cameras, or some company like Palantir, one of these companies going to be owning all of this information… We’re all going to be locked down. Everybody, you’re not going to be able to live or do anything that feels human. There’s going to become this kind of score, this sort of social and even emotional sort of credit score.”
Theo Von then talked about what he believes AI could become on a spiritual level.
“AI is going to try to become our new God,” Von said. “Because I think people go to God for their feelings, for help, for hope. They lay their faults at the feet of Jesus for hope.”
Von then suggested that AI systems could eventually take on a similar role in people’s lives.
He noted, “And you’re going to have to appease somehow. You’re going to have to do well enough for the data center to grant you whatever you then need.”
He also questioned why tech companies require so much data storage in the first place. He noted, “We’re sharing pictures, we’re sharing phones, we all have video in the cloud. We all have this stuff. There’s millions of episodes of different movies and all of this in the cloud.”
Wondering what more could possibly be needed, he added: “What do they need? That’s a lot. They’re asking for a lot.”
Von concluded by expressing concern about the broader cultural impact of AI and the people developing it.
He said, “I don’t see what it’s going to do for us. I don’t understand how to be human with it. I think we’ve let a lot of people that aren’t human start to take over society, and we’re seeing the repercussions of that.”
