Babel in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In recent months, I have found myself listening to lectures on artificial intelligence and quantum computing with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment.

There were moments when I understood perhaps half of what was being said. More than once, I felt less like a rabbi and more like someone who had accidentally wandered into a graduate seminar in theoretical physics. And yet, despite my limited technical understanding, I increasingly came away with the conviction that the most important questions raised by these technologies are not technical at all. They are spiritual!

Recently, Pope Leo XIV entered the growing conversation surrounding artificial intelligence, warning that technological advancement detached from moral responsibility could threaten human dignity. His comments received considerable attention, particularly among Catholics. What struck me, however, was not simply what the Pope said. It was how familiar the concern felt.

Because long before there were computers, algorithms, or quantum chips, our tradition wrestled with a remarkably similar question: What happens when human power grows faster than human wisdom?

The Torah’s answer may be found in one of its most misunderstood stories. The Tower of Babel is often read as a cautionary tale about human ambition. Sometimes it is even presented as a warning against technological progress itself.

But I have come to wonder whether the story is actually about something more subtle. The people of Babel are not condemned because they build. They are condemned because they believe that possessing the power to do something automatically justifies doing it. They confuse capability with wisdom. They seek greatness without humility. Power without accountability. Achievement without covenant.

In many ways, that temptation feels strikingly contemporary. We are entering an era in which artificial intelligence may help accelerate scientific discovery, transform medicine, optimize systems of staggering complexity, and reshape nearly every aspect of daily life. Some of these developments may reduce human suffering in extraordinary ways. As Jews, we should not fear knowledge. Ours is a tradition that reveres learning. The Talmud is built upon relentless questioning. Curiosity itself is often a sacred act.

Yet Jewish tradition has always distinguished between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge tells us what we can do. Wisdom asks whether we should. Knowledge expands power. Wisdom disciplines it. Knowledge allows us to build towers. Wisdom asks what kind of society we are constructing beneath them. That distinction feels increasingly urgent.

We now possess technologies capable of connecting people across continents in seconds, yet many people report unprecedented loneliness. We have access to more information than any generation in human history, yet public trust continues to erode. We can ask machines increasingly sophisticated questions while struggling to sustain meaningful conversations with one another. Something important is happening here. Our crisis may not be technological. It may be anthropological.

We have spent generations asking what our tools can become.

We have spent far less time asking what we ourselves are becoming. This is why I found Pope Leo’s intervention so compelling. Not because he offered technical expertise. But because he reminded the public that technological questions are ultimately human questions. No algorithm can perform teshuvah. No machine can cultivate humility. No artificial intelligence can assume responsibility for compassion, accountability, forgiveness, or moral courage. These remain uniquely human tasks. And they are precisely the kinds of tasks religious traditions were created to nurture.

The defining question of this century may not be whether artificial intelligence becomes more powerful. It almost certainly will. The deeper question is whether human beings will cultivate sufficient wisdom to remain recognizably human while wielding such power.

The story of Babel suggests that civilization’s greatest danger is not technological advancement itself. It is forgetting that power and wisdom are not the same thing. That lesson may be more urgent today than at any time since the tower first began to rise.