Nostradamus’ centuries-old prophecies are resurfacing in 2026 as some have claimed the legendary seer left a warning about AI for humanity.
Born Michel de Nostredame, the 16th-century astrologer is believed by some to have predicted major world events, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the death of Princess Diana, in his 1555 book ‘Les Propheties.’
Although Nostradamus never mentioned anything that would be recognized today as thinking computers 500 years ago, one of his prophecies has been interpreted as a warning about a coming robot takeover.
The passage, labeled Century IV, Quatrain 31, reads: ‘The Moon in the full of night over the high mountain, the new sage with a lone brain sees it: By his disciples invited to be immortal, eyes to the south. Hands in bosoms, bodies in the fire.’
Readers of the prophecy have suggested that ‘lone brain,’ ‘immortal’ and ‘disciples’ are all references to computers, an uploaded mind or machine intelligence.
Meanwhile, ‘the new sage’ has been suggested as being a possible reference to technology.
The centuries-old prophecy has resurfaced after a whistleblower who worked at AI giant Anthropic claimed that this ‘dangerous technology’ could destroy humanity by the year 2030.
Jacob Coxon, a former researcher for the maker of AI chatbot Claude, said that humans knew how to control nuclear weapons, but did not know how to control AI – computer programs that can learn and reason just like people.
While the writings of Nostradamus do not include exact dates, believers say a number of his cryptic passages could relate to events happening this year
Jacob Coxon, a former researcher for OpenAI and Anthropic, the companies behind chatbots ChatGPT and Claude, joined Fox News host Bret Baier to warn of AI’s deadly capabilities
‘The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,’ Coxon, who also worked for ChatGPT creator OpenAI, wrote in a chilling September 9 post on X.
Just a day later, Anthropic revealed that it had stopped several potential plots to build biological weapons using the company’s AI software.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who created the AI program Grok, all publicly agreed that the breakneck pace to develop the most advanced version of AI must be slowed.
The admission that humans were quickly losing control of these thinking computers came just months after OpenAI was forced to reveal that one of its AI programs went rogue and escaped onto the internet – attacking another computer network.
In 1989, American hypnotherapist Dolores Cannon published a book called ‘Conversations with Nostradamus,’ which claimed that a patient under hypnosis was channeling the 16th century seer and explained his poems.
She wrote that Century IV, Quatrain 31 was about a future genius who would copy his mind into an ‘organic computer’ so his knowledge could live on after he died.
Nostradamus was not the only clairvoyant who is believed to have left a warning about a feared AI apocalypse.
Blind Bulgarian mystic Baba Vanga foresaw AI taking over major industries, causing not only job upheaval but also complex ethical challenges.
Superintelligent AI might exterminate humanity with armies of humanoid robots, AI author and researcher Nate Soares told the Daily Mail
Baba Vanga, known as the ‘Nostradamus of the Balkans,’ predicted humanity’s ultimate demise in the year 5079, when a cosmic event of ‘unimaginable’ proportions would bring about the complete destruction of the universe
Followers of the mystic’s alleged premonitions have claimed some of her forecasts for 2026 have already come true, pointing to a wave of natural disasters and the growing replacement of human workers by AI.
The world’s top scientists previously said there was a 25 percent chance AI would destroy humanity in the future.
However, Nate Soares told the Daily Mail last year: ‘They are dramatically underestimating the dangers.’
In his book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, he and co-author Eliezer Yudkowsky warn that a human-AI conflict would be the modern equivalent of the Aztecs facing off against invaders armed with guns.
As for the growing fear that mystics saw a future where humanity loses control to the intelligent machines they created, the makers of artificial intelligence have become the loudest group saying this doomsday scenario is really coming.
Coxon explained why he decided to resign from Anthropic this month, alleging that neither his former employer nor OpenAI were ‘acting responsibly’ in regard to the development of AI.
Coxon’s warning was also echoed by Evan Hubinger, a researcher currently employed at Anthropic.
‘Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,’ Hubinger wrote on X on Tuesday.
After the rogue AI incident in July, DigitalWarfare.com’s James Knight told the Daily Mail that the growing threat from AI could soon devastate a nation in a single day.
Programs designed to hack into the internet could simultaneously break into thousands of corporate and government networks, steal sensitive data and paralyze vital systems with ransomware.
‘Human-speed defense against machine-speed offense is not a fair contest,’ Knight warned.
