On Monday, Pope Leo XIV (an unusual place for us to start, but bear with us) released “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” a letter to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics on how to preserve human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence. Genesis’ story of the Tower of Babel is a touchstone throughout the document, outlining the Church’s desire to protect human dignity and agency as the tech industry races to build an all-powerful superintellegence: “I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell.”
And the Pope is not alone. Around the world, a surge of religious groups have begun organizing working groups and conferences, public and private, as communities come to fully understand that whatever script they’ve used in the past to address technological change simply won’t cut it in the age of AI.
Some Jews, like Rabbi Zohar Atkins, argue that AI bots will lead to a renaissance in Jewish learning and the democratization of Jewish wisdom. Others are less sanguine. R. Eliezer Simcha Weiss, the representative of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to the Vatican said that, in high-level discussions on AI ethics with the Holy See, he urged the Church to think of AI less like the Tower of Babel and more like the Golem of Prague.
This week on Not In Heaven, our rabbinic podcasters argue whether religious communities should be getting out ahead of AI or taking a more deliberative, wait-and-see approach to the technology.
Credits
Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
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