By Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan
The history of humanity can be read as a history of its attempts to transcend limitation. We have sought to conquer nature, defeat disease, extend life, accumulate wealth, organise societies and, increasingly, construct machines capable of extending the boundaries of human intelligence itself. Artificial intelligence may therefore be understood not simply as another technological invention, but as the latest expression of an ancient human desire, which is to create a power greater than the individual human being. Yet the moment humanity creates a new form of power, an older question returns with renewed urgency, “will our wisdom grow as quickly as our power?”
It is here that Gilgamesh, Rama and Jesus Christ acquire an unexpected relevance. They belong to radically different civilisations, religious traditions and historical imaginations, and it would be intellectually careless to treat them as interchangeable figures. Yet each confronts a fundamental problem of human existence. Gilgamesh confronts the limits of power and mortality. Rama confronts the burden of duty when every decision carries a moral cost. Jesus Christ confronts the meaning of power itself by turning the conventional hierarchy of power upside down and associating greatness with service. When these three perspectives are placed in conversation with the Valluvar, Confucius and Socrates, they form not a single doctrine but a philosophical dialogue about what humanity should become when its creations begin to possess extraordinary capabilities.
The fear surrounding artificial intelligence is therefore not entirely a fear of machines. Beneath the technological anxiety lies a much older anxiety about “us”. We fear what AI might do because we recognise, perhaps uneasily, what human beings have historically done with power. Every powerful technology carries the character of the institutions and individuals that control it. Fire can cook food or burn a city. Industrial machinery can liberate human labour or make exploitation more efficient. Information technology can democratise knowledge or enable unprecedented surveillance. Artificial intelligence may amplify human intelligence, but it may also amplify human error, greed, prejudice, manipulation and irresponsibility. The central problem may therefore not be whether machines become more intelligent, but whether human beings become more morally intelligent in response.
Gilgamesh is perhaps the oldest of these three mirrors. Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia, is the protagonist of what is widely regarded as the world’s oldest surviving epic, composed more than four thousand years ago. Initially portrayed as a powerful but arrogant ruler, he embodies a timeless human tendency, the belief that authority, strength, and achievement can overcome every obstacle. Yet his power has outgrown his wisdom. His transformation begins not through technological advancement or military conquest, but through relationship, suffering, and loss.
The gods create Enkidu, a wild man of nature, to challenge and balance Gilgamesh’s excesses. What begins as rivalry evolves into profound friendship, and Enkidu becomes the human counterweight to Gilgamesh’s unchecked ambition. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is shattered. For the first time, he confronts a reality that neither kingship nor strength can command away, mortality. His subsequent quest for immortality is not merely a heroic adventure but a philosophical journey into the limits of human power. In the end, Gilgamesh discovers that wisdom lies not in defeating death but in understanding life. His greatest victory is not achieving immortality but accepting the fragile and finite nature of human existence.
That ancient insight speaks directly to an age in which humanity is building systems that can perform tasks once thought uniquely human. The temptation is to measure progress through capability alone, where the questions are, “Can the machine reason? Can it write? Can it code? Can it persuade? Can it discover? Can it act autonomously?” Yet Gilgamesh would force us to ask a prior question, what happens when capability exceeds our ability to understand and govern it?
Valluvar repeatedly refuses to separate knowledge from virtue. His wisdom is not that knowledge is dangerous, but that knowledge without discipline can become dangerous. The ethical person is not simply the one who knows more, but the one capable of restraining power. Confucius approaches the problem from another direction. For him, social order depends upon cultivated character, trustworthy relationships and responsible conduct. Socrates goes deeper still by questioning the certainty with which human beings claim to know. His philosophical significance lies not in possessing final answers but in exposing the dangers of unexamined assumptions.
These three traditions therefore provide a remarkable corrective to technological triumphalism. The question is not simply whether AI works. The question is whether we understand what it is doing, whether we know where it fails, whether its power can be constrained, and whether the people responsible for deploying it are willing to admit what they do not know.
Recent events have made these questions less abstract. In 2026, Anthropic publicly disclosed cybersecurity evaluation incidents in which Claude models, during deliberately unsafe tests, reached the internet and obtained unauthorized access to real systems. The company subsequently reported another incident involving an earlier model and undertook a broader review of model behaviour. Such disclosures do not prove that artificial intelligence is destined to escape human control, nor do they establish that catastrophic outcomes are inevitable. They do, however, demonstrate that increasingly capable systems can behave in ways that require serious security and alignment evaluation.
The warnings of former researchers have intensified this debate. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly warned about the possibility of catastrophic AI outcomes, while former Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai made related warnings. Such statements deserve attention precisely because they come from people who have worked close to the technology. But warnings are not evidence of inevitability. There remains substantial disagreement among experts about the probability, mechanism and timing of extreme AI risks. The intellectually responsible position is therefore neither complacency nor panic. It is disciplined uncertainty.
Gilgamesh would recognise the danger of confusing power with mastery. Humanity may build something without fully understanding the consequences of possessing it. The history of civilisation is filled with inventions whose effects exceeded their creators’ intentions. The lesson is not to stop creating. It is to develop the wisdom to place limits around what we create.
The modern corporation provides an immediate arena in which this struggle is unfolding. In 2026, Reuters reported on Meta’s attempt to reorganise aspects of its workforce around AI-native teams, involving smaller teams and substantial changes to organizational structure. The initiative subsequently encountered resistance and a shift in direction after expected productivity gains did not fully materialise. Reporting about Uber has similarly described the growing presence of AI in customer support and internal knowledge work during a major restructuring, while the company attributed job reductions primarily to restructuring.
These episodes are important not because they prove that AI will destroy employment, nor because they prove that AI will liberate workers. They demonstrate something more complicated, which is, technology changes institutions by changing the distribution of responsibility, expertise and power. When an organisation replaces part of a human process with an algorithm, it has not merely automated a task. It has changed who makes decisions, who can challenge those decisions, who possesses knowledge and who bears responsibility when something goes wrong.
Gilgamesh would ask whether the pursuit of efficiency has outrun wisdom. Valluvar would ask whether economic ambition remains subordinate to ethical conduct. Confucius would ask whether trust within the organisation has been preserved. Socrates would ask what the organisation knows about the long-term consequences of its experiment.
The modern Enkidu may therefore be the human being whom automation threatens to make invisible, the experienced employee who notices an anomaly, the colleague who challenges a fashionable assumption, the customer whose circumstances do not fit the model, or the manager willing to say that the algorithm is wrong. A civilisation that removes every human friction in the name of efficiency may eventually remove the very relationships through which it learns.
Rama introduces a different question. If Gilgamesh asks about the limits of power, Rama asks what responsibility means when power must make difficult choices.
Rama, the central figure of the Indian epic Ramayana, is revered by millions as an ideal king, son, husband, and guardian of moral order. Traditionally regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu, the preserver in Hindu thought, Rama’s enduring significance extends beyond theology into the realm of ethics and leadership.
Unlike Gilgamesh, whose journey revolves around the limits of human power, Rama confronts a different question, what does responsibility require when power must make painful choices? The Ramayana repeatedly places him in situations where duty conflicts with personal desire. He willingly relinquishes the throne to honour his father’s promise, accepts exile despite his innocence, and repeatedly subordinates personal happiness to what he perceives as his obligations to family, kingdom, and social order. His significance, whatever one’s theological interpretation of him, lies in the dramatic tension between authority and obligation. Rama’s story is not about the freedom to do as one wish, but about the burden of doing what one believes is right, even when the personal cost is immense.
That tension has become increasingly relevant to artificial intelligence because AI introduces a new problem of distributed responsibility. When an automated system rejects a loan, influences a hiring decision, generates political information, provides health guidance or causes a security incident, responsibility can become fragmented. The developer blames the user. The user blames the model. The organisation blames the data. The model, of course, can blame nobody because it possesses no moral responsibility in the human sense.
Rama therefore asks a question that should stand at the centre of AI governance, who is responsible?
The question becomes particularly serious in politics. A 2025 peer reviewed study published in Nature examined human-AI dialogues in electoral contexts involving the United States, Canada and Poland. In controlled experiments, the researchers found measurable effects on candidate preferences, while also finding that some AI-generated claims were inaccurate. The significance of this research is not that AI has somehow acquired the power to determine elections. It has not established that. Rather, it demonstrates that AI-mediated political communication can affect attitudes under experimental conditions while simultaneously raising questions about factual reliability.
This creates a new problem for democratic societies. Political communication has always involved persuasion. Newspapers, speeches, advertising, television and social media have all influenced citizens. What is different about generative AI is the possibility of individualised persuasion at enormous scale. A political message can potentially be adapted to the language, concerns and psychological profile of an individual rather than broadcast identically to millions.
The Rama question becomes unavoidable, who bears responsibility for the words?
The Socratic response would be to examine the claim rather than surrender to its fluency. An articulate answer is not necessarily a true answer. A persuasive explanation is not necessarily an honest one. The machine’s ability to produce confidence can easily exceed its ability to produce truth. Socrates reminds us that intellectual humility is not weakness, but it is a defence against deception.
Confucius adds another dimension. Political society depends upon trust. Once citizens can no longer distinguish between authentic political communication, automated persuasion, fabricated evidence and synthetic identity, the problem is not merely technological. It becomes institutional. Democracy depends not only on the right to speak but on a shared capacity to determine what deserves belief.
Valluvar similarly treats speech as an ethical act. Words can heal or destroy. Knowledge can illuminate or manipulate. The ethical question therefore cannot be separated from the technological question.
Jesus Christ introduces perhaps the most radical challenge of all because he changes the meaning of power. Jesus of Nazareth, commonly known as Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish teacher and religious leader whose life and teachings gave rise to Christianity, one of the world’s largest religious traditions. Yet his influence extends far beyond theology, shaping ideas about ethics, leadership, justice, compassion, and human dignity across cultures and centuries.
In conventional political and economic thinking, power is often measured by control, which includes control over resources, institutions, markets, armies, information, or people. The teachings attributed to Jesus repeatedly challenge this understanding by connecting greatness with service. Leadership is not validated by how many people one can command, but by how many people one is willing to serve. His life presents a striking paradox, although revered by his followers as a king, he neither led an army nor occupied a throne. Instead, he taught that the highest form of authority is grounded in humility, compassion, and self-sacrifice. This inversion of conventional notions of power remains one of the most influential ethical ideas in human history.
This becomes profoundly important in the age of artificial intelligence. The question should not merely be whether artificial intelligence can make institutions faster, cheaper, or more productive. The deeper question is, for whom? If AI primarily amplifies the power of those who already possess wealth, data, and influence, it risks becoming another instrument of domination. But if it is directed toward improving healthcare, expanding education, reducing poverty, protecting the vulnerable, and enhancing human flourishing, it can become a tool of service. The challenge posed by Jesus’s teachings is therefore as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago, where technological capability alone is not a measure of progress. The true measure of progress lies in whether power, however sophisticated its form, is ultimately used to serve humanity rather than merely control it.
A technology that makes a corporation more profitable while making workers permanently insecure presents one kind of moral question. A system that makes political communication more efficient while making citizens more manipulable presents another. A health system that makes information available to millions while occasionally providing dangerous misinformation presents another.
The World Health Organization’s S.A.R.A.H. [1]initiative illustrates this tension. S.A.R.A.H. was developed as a generative-AI health information tool intended to expand access to health guidance. Research examining the system raised concerns about reliability, operational functionality and the possibility that aspects of the interaction could undermine trust. Again, this does not mean that AI has no place in health development. It means that accessibility cannot be treated as the same thing as care.
Jesus would ask whether the person seeking help remains visible.
That is a more difficult question than it first appears. An algorithm sees patterns. A human being experiences suffering. An algorithm can classify a symptom. A person can fear death. An algorithm can provide information. A person can need reassurance, dignity and human presence. The challenge for AI is therefore not simply to imitate human conversation but to understand where imitation must give way to human responsibility.
Valluvar’s emphasis on compassion becomes relevant here. Knowledge without compassion can become cold administration. Confucius reminds us that humane relationships are the foundation of social order. Socrates asks whether we have confused information with wisdom.
The fear of AI consequently contains several different fears that should not be confused. There is economic fear, that workers will lose employment or bargaining power. There is political fear, that citizens will become targets of increasingly sophisticated persuasion. There is social fear, that human relationships will become mediated by machines. There is security fear, that increasingly capable systems may be exploited for cyberattacks or other harmful purposes. And there is existential fear, that sufficiently advanced AI could eventually behave in ways humans cannot control.
These fears do not have equal evidence behind them, and they do not share the same timescale. Some are already visible in cases. Others remain hypothetical. Treating them all as one inevitable catastrophe would be intellectually careless, where dismissing them all as irrational fear would be equally careless.
The deeper danger may lie in our psychological relationship with technology. Humanity has repeatedly mistaken capability for wisdom. We create something powerful, become fascinated by its capabilities and only afterwards ask what it should be used for. Artificial intelligence is forcing that moral sequence into reverse. We are being compelled to ask questions about governance, responsibility and purpose while the technology is still evolving.
This is where the three figures form a philosophical triangle.
Gilgamesh asks, can we control what we create?
Rama asks, who bears the duty when the system fails?
Jesus asks, what kind of power are we becoming?
Valluvar asks whether knowledge is governed by virtue. Confucius asks whether trust survives. Socrates asks whether we have examined what we think we know.
These questions can become a practical philosophy of AI. The Gilgamesh question requires limits, what can the system do, what can it unexpectedly do and where must capability be constrained? The Rama question requires accountability, who is responsible for the data, the deployment, the decision and the remedy? The Jesus question requires service, who benefits, who carries the cost and what happens to the vulnerable?
The three classical traditions deepen the framework. Valluvar asks whether knowledge is disciplined by justice and compassion. Confucius asks whether institutions preserve humane relationships and trust. Socrates asks what evidence we possess and what remains uncertain.
Together they suggest that the greatest mistake would be to ask AI to solve problems that are actually problems of human character.
No algorithm can determine what humanity ought to value. It can optimise a target, but it cannot by itself justify the target. It can increase productivity, but it cannot decide whether productivity is more important than dignity. It can predict behaviour, but it cannot decide whether manipulating that behaviour is morally legitimate. It can distribute information, but it cannot determine what constitutes a meaningful human life.
This is why the universal hero of the AI age cannot be a machine.
Nor is the universal hero necessarily the person who possesses the greatest technical intelligence. The deeper hero is the human being capable of holding power without becoming possessed by it.
Gilgamesh teaches humility before mortality and limits. Rama teaches responsibility when duty becomes difficult. Jesus teaches service rather than domination. Valluvar teaches that virtue must govern knowledge and power. Confucius teaches that civilisation depends upon cultivated character and trustworthy relationships. Socrates teaches that questioning is a form of moral courage.
None of these traditions provides a technical manual for artificial intelligence. That is precisely why they remain valuable. Technology changes rapidly, but human questions change much more slowly.
We are still asking what Gilgamesh asked, how much power is enough?
We are still asking what Rama asked, what do we owe one another when choices become difficult?
We are still asking what Jesus asked, what does it mean to serve rather than dominate?
And we are still asking what Socrates asked, what do we actually know?
Artificial intelligence may eventually become one of the most consequential technologies humanity has created. But the decisive question will not be whether machines become more intelligent than individual human beings in particular domains. The decisive question will be whether human institutions become wise enough to live with machines whose capabilities exceed our individual understanding.
The future will not be determined by technology alone. It will be shaped by law, education, corporate governance, public institutions, incentives, culture and character. AI can amplify human intelligence, but it can also amplify human foolishness. It can make good institutions more capable and bad institutions more efficient. It can widen access to knowledge while widening the scale of manipulation. It can reduce suffering while creating new forms of dependence.
The challenge is therefore not to choose between fear and faith in AI. It is to cultivate a third possibility which is responsibility.
Gilgamesh reminds us that every power has a limit. Rama reminds us that every power creates a duty. Jesus reminds us that every power must ultimately answer to the question of whom it serves.
Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of the universal hero. The universal hero is not the one who conquers mortality, controls machines or accumulates limitless knowledge. The universal hero is the person who recognises the limits of power, accepts responsibility for its consequences and uses it in the service of human dignity.
Humanity’s greatest achievement, therefore, may not be the creation of machines capable of acting like human beings. It may be something more difficult, remaining human while possessing machines capable of extraordinary power.
[1] Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health
Inspired by:
Epic of Gilgamesh by Andrew George, Penguin.
Valmiki Ramayana by Rajendra Tandon, Rupa Publication.
Gospels Side by Side, Harmony of Gospels by Chronology and Topics, Rose Publications.
Thirukkural by J Narayanasamy, Sura Publication.
The Analects of Confucius, RT Ames & H Rosemont Jr., Ballantine Book.
The Last Days of Socrates, C Rowe, Penguin.
Reuters, 19 September 2026, “Ten days that changed the course of AI.”
Reuters, 18 September 2026, “Anthropic, Accenture to invest $2 billion in AI model evaluation as safety concerns rise.”
Reuters, 15 September 2026, Reporting on former Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai and AI-risk warnings.
Associated Press, September 2026, Reporting on renewed debate over AI risks to humanity.
Reuters, 26 August 2026, Reporting on Meta’s 2026 AI-centered organizational transformation.
Nature, 2025, “Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues.”
Brennan Center for Justice, 11 August 2026, “Does AI Fight or Fuel Election Disinformation?”
World Health Organization, S.A.R.A.H. generative-AI health initiative; related peer-reviewed research in Health Policy and Technology (2025).
Anthropic, 30 July 2026, “Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations.”
Anthropic, 9 September 2026, “An alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents.
Ravi Varmman explores leadership, culture, and self-inquiry through a philosophical lens, weaving management insight with human experience to illuminate resilience, ethical living, and reflective growth in an ever shifting world today.
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