Gods Fashioned By Men
Note: The panel composition of this piece is a satirical spin on the front side of the altarpiece Maestá by Duccio. The Maestá depicts the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus, with angels and saints surrounding them. Stories of Mary’s life are on the front panel, while stories of Christ’s life are on the backside. The angels are enshrined at the top, while the humble stories of Mary are painted at the bottom. In my piece, these elements are reflected.
Panels 1-3, 5-7 (The Angels):
Narration: Geoffrey Hinton; Godfather of AI
Hinton’s portrait sits above a recreation of the Nobel Prize award.
Narration: Sundar Pichai; CEO of Google
Pichai’s portrait sits above a recreation of the Google logo.
Narration: Jenson Huang; CEO of Nvidia
Huang’s portrait sits above a recreation of the Nvidia logo.
Narration: Jeff Bezos; Founder of Amazon
Bezos’s portrait sits above a recreation of the Amazon logo.
Narration: Elon Musk; Founder of xAI
Musk’s portrait sits above a recreation of the xAI logo.
Narration: Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI
Altman’s portrait sits above a recreation of the OpenAI logo.
Panel 4: Narration: Silicon Valley has begun to use increasingly religious language to refer to AI.
Panel 8 (The Citation): (Fauria, Krysta. “How Silicon Valley is using religious language to talk about AI” APNews, 29 August 2025.)
Panel 9 (The Virgin Mary, The Christ Child, and The Saints): Narration: Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of AI, referred to the technology as “godlike”.
Narration: Open AI’s CEO, Sam Altman, has called Chat GPT a “magical intelligence in the sky”.
Sam Altman sits on a throne in place of the Virgin Mary, holding an AI server in place of the Christ Child. Tangled wires from the server trickle down into the layer of panels below. Huddled around the throne are leading figures in or supporters of the AI boom in place of the Saints.
From left to right: Donald Trump (President of the United States), Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic), Tim Cook (CEO of Apple), Shantanu Narayen (CEO of Adobe), Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), Demis Hassabis (CEO of Google Deepmind), Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta), David Holz (CEO of Midjourney), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), and Clément Delangue (CEO of Hugging Face).
Panel 10 (The Humble Stories): Narration: Tech giants and politicians alike praise AI, despite the harm is has already caused
Panel 11: Narration: AI data centers use a lot of energy & water which contributes to CO2 emissions.
A graphic depicts CO2 emissions increasing.
Panel 12: Narration: The Black community in Boxtown of Memphis, TN is being poisoned by pollution from xAI data centers.
Alexis Humphreys, a Boxtown resident, is depicted and labeled. Her likeness is drawn from her interview in the video, “We Went to the Town Elon Musk is Poisoning” by More Perfect Union on YouTube. Her shirt reads “WE NEED CLEAN AIR”.
Panel 13: Narration: AI Steals from real artists (and looks really bad)
A recreation of an AI-generated image of deformed hands wrapping around an orange that I saw in an article about AI-generated “art”.
Panel 14: A recreation of the headline of a news article from The New York Post.
Narration: “Parents sue Character AI—firm behind ‘Harry Potter’ chat bots—over teen deaths, suicide attempts”
By Taylor Herzlich
Published Sep. 17, 2026
Panel 15: Narration: People are becoming overly reliant on AI
A depiction of a smartphone with ChatGPT open, with text reading:
Examples
“Explain how to talk to someone”
“Got any creative ideas for a wedding proposal?”
“What is 2+2?”
Capabilities
Remember what users sent earlier in conversation
“How do I say hi?”
Panel 16 (The Conclusion): Narration: But despite what they say, AI isn’t really God. It’s just a god fashioned by men.
