Vatican Ethics, Age Gates, and the Data Center Siege
May 31, 2026
State legislatures and religious institutions are converging on top-down AI governance, deploying age-verification mandates and moral frameworks to steer frontier development while centralizing behavioral surveillance. Open-source coalitions and municipal networks are pushing back through infrastructure moratoriums and privacy defenses, exposing the physical and epistemic costs of algorithmic enclosure. This collision maps a broader fracture between institutional moral-state control and decentralized technical sovereignty, where governance is increasingly fought over data centers, age gates, and competing ethical architectures.
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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: CA's AB 1856 Exempts Open Source But Expands Age-Gating
After public outrage, California lawmakers are moving closer to exempting open source operating systems from the sweeping age-bracketing regime mandated by last year’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043). Nonetheless, the current bill still jeopardizes internet users’ speech, privacy, and security.…
- AI governance
- structural power
- media and technology
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The Race to Build AI Data Centers — Before the People Can Protest
From Utah to Georgia, communities are demanding data center moratoriums as concerns move from local zoning fights into national politics. The post The Race to Build AI Data Centers — Before the People Can Protest appeared first on The Intercept.
- structural power
- geopolitics
- OSINT methodology
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Illinois Lawmakers Just Passed America’s Strongest AI Safety Bill
The bill requires companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to have third parties confirm they’re following safety standards. Illinois governor JB Pritzker says he’ll sign it.
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Pope’s encyclical raises questions on who gets to shape AI
The encyclical provides an ethical and moral framework for AI, but one that is steeped in Catholicism and ignores the faiths and practices of a majority of the world’s population.
- AI governance
- media and technology
- geopolitics
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AI godbots: religious leaders warn of ‘alarming consequences’ when machines speak in the name of God
Shutterstock/3Dmaniac I (Adam) am chatting with the “Apostle Stephen”, an online chatbot created by the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a church founded in Nigeria in the 1950s with a growing global following. He is, to be honest, a bit pushy for an apostle. In my conversation with Apostle Stephen…
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Age Verification is a Privacy Nightmare
In the rush to block young people from certain parts of the internet, lawmakers are creating a privacy and security nightmare for everyone. This scenario is already playing out globally. Help us stop it and keep the web open and accessible for all. JOIN EFF Protect the web for everyone Even with the…
- AI governance
- structural power
- media and technology
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The Vatican’s Man Inside Anthropic
Pope Leo XIV may not be able to disarm AI, but he’s got the attention of the industry.
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The story of Pope Leo’s ‘landmark’ text on AI technology – by a member of its launch panel
For the last few years, I’ve been seconded to assist the Catholic Church’s unprecedented global grassroots listening initiative. Just as that process drew to a close, I received a surprise request: would I help Pope Leo XIV launch his first social encyclical, focused on what it means to be human in…
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