Artificial intelligence (AI) may be poised to deliver humanity's ‘fourth great humiliation’ by challenging the long-held belief that intelligence and reason make human beings uniquely special, Swami Sarvapriyananda said at a summit. Drawing on Sigmund Freud's framework of three historic blows to human self-esteem, the Vedanta Society of New York's resident minister asked whether systems such as Claude and ChatGPT are forcing a similar reckoning with human identity.
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Freud's three blows
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2026 in a session titled 'Can Code Be Conscious? Rethinking the Mind in the Age of AI', Swami Sarvapriyananda traced humanity's successive dents in self-importance. Copernicus first showed that Earth is not the centre of the universe; Darwin then challenged the belief that humans are separate from the animal kingdom, saying humans descended from apes.
Freud delivered the third blow, according to the monk, by arguing that human rationality is merely the "tip of the iceberg", with a vast unconscious realm of irrationality beneath it. "We thought that all right, we are animals, but at least we are rational animals. And Freud says, I'm showing that our so-called rationality is just, you know, tip of the iceberg," he said.
AI as the fourth humiliation
Against this backdrop, Swami Sarvapriyananda posed the question of whether modern AI systems are delivering a fourth such humiliation. "Now, that leads me to leads us to question today whether Claude and ChatGPT and OpenAI are delivering the fourth great humiliation to humanity?" he asked.
His point was not simply that machines can perform tasks, but that their growing capabilities expose how much of what humans considered uniquely human i.e. reasoning, analysis, creativity may not be exclusive to us after all. Leading experts, he noted, are growing anxious as AI performs their work faster and, in some cases, better.
What makes humans special
The monk argued that humanity now stands at a crucial moment requiring introspection about what genuinely distinguishes people from machines. "We are at a crucial moment where we need to ask ourselves once again - what is it that distinguishes us? What is it that makes us special and unique? Where should we invest ourselves in?" he said.
His answer pointed to ancient traditions as a source of guidance. "The answer to that is we have to look to our ancient traditions," Swami Sarvapriyananda added, suggesting that philosophical and spiritual frameworks may offer insight where technological capability alone cannot.
Anthropic's cross-cultural dialogue
Swami Sarvapriyananda was among scholars from more than 15 religious and cross-cultural traditions invited by Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model, to discuss questions of AI ethics, morality and consciousness.
