Technology and the New Babel

I was chatting with a colleague the other day about artificial intelligence. I had used it to track recurring headaches (all is well now), and he had used it to translate a note from his son’s school. What struck us both was how quickly we had trusted this tool—how natural it felt to rely on something so capable, even though it isn’t human. That ease of trust is not trivial. In fact, a new study shows that 41% of Gen Z now trust AI more than humans when it comes to workplace mentorship. They feel more comfortable confiding in algorithms than in managers.

That statistic made me pause. Progress is about building on what the previous generation created and improving it. That is good and right. But can we place too much faith in the tools of progress? Is there a danger when the thing we trust most is not God and not one another, but a machine?

This question brought to mind a story from the Bible: the Tower of Babel. The Torah says:

With that unity, humanity built a great tower “that would reach the heavens.” On the surface, it was progress, cooperation, coordination, even ambition. But the unity was false. It was built not on faith in Hashem but on faith in themselves and their own creation. God intervened, scattering them and confusing their speech.

At first glance, this judgment feels harsh. No violence was committed, no cities were destroyed. But Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains that the Tower of Babel represents the other extreme of human failure: the collective crushing the individual. After the Flood, when anarchy reigned, Babel swung too far in the opposite direction. In its drive for sameness and control, individuality was erased. The people placed their trust in the project, not in God, and the result was a unity that was brittle and dangerous.

The irony is sharp: they had one language, yet it was a language of falsehood. They shared words, but not truth. And so God restored diversity, scattering the nations into seventy tongues, teaching that His vision for humanity is not forced uniformity but harmony within difference.

What does this have to do with AI? Everything. Artificial intelligence promises us a new kind of “common language.” It can translate any tongue, generate answers in seconds, and smooth away the rough edges of human misunderstanding. It feels like progress. But if we place our deepest trust in algorithms, we are once again climbing Babel’s tower. We are uniting around something that looks impressive but cannot hold the weight of human responsibility.

Rabbi Sacks once recounted a conversation with Catholic historian Paul Johnson, who observed that societies tend to choose between the individual and the collective. The secular West leans toward the individual. Communist regimes crush the individual for the collective. What makes Judaism unique, Johnson said, is that it holds both together. As Hillel taught: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” The Torah insists on the dignity of the individual and the responsibility of the community.

That balance is what was missing in Babel. Their unity erased individuality. Their trust in the collective project displaced their trust in God. And that is the warning for our generation. If we surrender our judgment, our individuality, and even our faith to the “intelligence” of machines, then we are building a tower without foundations.

The verse that comes just before the story of Babel is telling. After the Flood, God promises:

God acknowledges human weakness but commits to a different kind of relationship. Instead of destruction, He offers covenant. Instead of wiping away failure, He calls on humanity to live responsibly.

The lesson for us is that progress itself is not the problem. Tools are not the problem. AI can help us flourish. But progress without covenant, tools without responsibility, language without truth, these collapse into Babel.

Our generation has the opportunity to build something different. To use the tools of intelligence – human and artificial alike, while remembering that trust belongs first to Hashem, and responsibility belongs to us. The miracle of monotheism is that unity in Heaven creates diversity on earth. The challenge is to live out that balance: strong individuals, strong communities, faithful to God.

That is what keeps the tower standing.