This story aired in the January 21, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
A prayer can reveal what we truly desire or what we fear most. Matthew Hall prays, “that all of the saints and God and the angels guide Pope Leo in, in guiding humanity into victory over artificial super intelligence...”
Hall, also known as Yakko, is the leader of the activist group Stop AI. Here he talks about his faith and the fight against artificial super intelligence.
Click the button above to listen.
Story Transcript:
Sound of protestors chanting, “Stop AI or were all gonna die”
REPORTER: I’m outside the headquarters of Open AI on 3rd street. It's a cold, grey San Francisco evening but the protestors from Stop AI are full of energy. They’re dressed as robots and grim reapers with scythes that say ‘Stop AI’ in dripping blood.
SAM KIRCHNER: If someone is found guilty for trying to build ASI, they should be tried for the attempted murder of everybody on Earth.
Sound of protestor yelling “Homicide!”
REPORTER: Amidst this noise, Yakko stands quietly, observing. He wears a bucket hat printed with cats, his red goatee tied up in a knot. He doesn't fit my mental image of an anti-AI activist, but later, talking to him about his spiritual journey, it becomes clear what led him here.
MATTHEW HALL aka YAKKO: I grew up with a mother who called herself Catholic and a father who called himself an atheist.
REPORTER: For most of his life, he considered himself an atheist, too.
YAKKO: My argument was like, “You can't prove it. You can't prove there's a God.”
REPORTER: But in recent years he began grappling with his beliefs
YAKKO: It was a really hard time. I just came to a realization that, um, faith and a belief in God isn't about having to prove it to anybody, it's about having a personal experience.
REPORTER: During this time he quit his job. He began living on the street in an attempt to drop out from what he saw as a bankrupt system.
His soul-searching drew him to Catholicism, his mother’s faith.
One day he sought advice from a priest.
YAKKO: He said, “It's important that you find community. You find God through other humans, through other people.”
REPORTER: He started going to political events, hoping to meet like-minded people.
YAKKO: And so I was like, “Okay, well I guess I'll go check out this Stop AI group.”
REPORTER: He had seen them all over the Bay Area, handing out their bright red flyers. Their mission: to permanently BAN the development of Artificial Superintelligence.
Artificial super intelligence is theoretical. It doesn't exist yet and it may never be developed. That said, AI developers are currently working on what's called AGI or artificial general intelligence. This is an AI that can function at the level of a human.
Stop AI members fear that AGI could open the door for artificial super intelligence, an AI vastly smarter than any human being. They call this an extinction-level threat.
YAKKO: This, this idea that an artificial super intelligence would care about human geopolitics is like saying, does the average human care about the conflicts between two anthills? Do we bother to figure them out, or do we just wipe out the ants if they're bothering us?
REPORTER: Stop AI is extreme, but they are not alone in their worries:
Sound of TV footage: “That was Pope Leo on just day three of his pontificate, speaking to the College of Cardinals. In his first official address as Pope he identified artificial intelligence as the main challenge for humanity today, saying AI can threaten human dignity, justice and labor.”
YAKKO: This was just after Pope Leo had been elected Pope and he was starting to talk about AI. And it kind of seemed divinely inspired that a priest at the church and this Stop AI group were kind of lining up at the same time. So it's all part of a broader walk of faith for me.
REPORTER: In June of 2025 Yakko officially joined the group and began living in a house with the three core members of Stop AI. None of them have day jobs. They dedicate themselves relentlessly to this cause and at times tensions run high
YAKKO: I won't lie, I'll be transparent. We get into arguments, we fight. One, because we're under a lot of stress. And two, we don't actually agree on everything. Like, other than our joint goal of trying to protect humanity from an extinction-level threat from artificial super intelligence, we don't actually agree on everything else.
REPORTER: Yakko and I spoke in October 2025, and in retrospect, this comment may have been an understatement. In November, Sam Kirchner, a core Stop AI member and the guy you heard shouting at the protest, disappeared. Yakko says, that was just days after Sam lobbed punches at him, renouncing his commitment to nonviolence.
When Yakko went to check on him, Sam’s apartment door was ajar, his phone and laptop were left on his bed but his bike and camping gear were missing. That same day Open AI received threats of violence and shut down its campus.
Even before Sam’s disappearance, Yakko admitted that all the unknowns in this cause can make it messy and confusing.
YAKKO: It's a big, scary topic, and it can really grate on you and really wear on you. And if you're not immediately seeing progress, it can be very scary and very depressing. So I'm also just trying to keep hope alive and keep the people in the group motivated to keep going.
REPORTER: He says, he knows others in his group lose hope, and they express that in different ways.
YAKKO: Whether that's frustration, whether that's despair. But I don't lose hope because – and this is just my personal experience because of my faith – I firmly believe God wants us to succeed and wants humanity to succeed.
REPORTER: Confident that God is on their side, Yakko continues to lead his flock in their fight against the machines.
Note: Scoring for this story was done by Mihaly Mundruczo.
