Babel with better WIFI

There is something almost biblical about artificial intelligence.

Not because it is magical or demonic. Nor should we gather around a laptop and start looking for the Antichrist in autocomplete. AI is biblical because it exposes us. It reveals what we want (think back to the show Lucifer on Netflix (I think)). It reveals what we fear. and what we are willing to outsource. It reveals who gets protected and who gets replaced, who gets watched, who gets silenced, and who gets to make the rules while the rest of us click “accept all cookies” like technologically exhausted peasants at the gates of empire.

In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV does not ask whether artificial intelligence is impressive. Of course it is impressive. So was Babel. So were Pharaoh’s storehouses. So were Rome’s roads, aqueducts and instruments of execution. Human beings have always been very good at building things that astonish us before we have become morally mature enough to use them well.

Therein lies the problem.

The Church is not anti-technology. This needs saying clearly, because every time the Church raises an ethical concern someone assumes she wants us all writing with quills under candlelight while chanting in Latin. Tempting, on some days, but no. Catholic Social Teaching has never asked humanity to fear tools simply because they are new. The plough, the printing press, the microscope, the train, the internet, the smartphone: each has altered the human story. Each has carried possibility. Each has also carried risk.

The question is never simply, ‘Can we build it?’

The question is, ‘What kind of people are we becoming because we have built it?’

AI can be a genuine tool for human flourishing. It can help a teacher differentiate learning for a child who has quietly been lost for months. It can help a doctor detect patterns that the human eye might miss. It can support people with disability, translate across languages, assist research, reduce administrative burden, open creative possibilities, and help us think through complex problems with greater speed and breadth. The possibilities seem endless. Used ethically, AI can be a servant of study, creativity and justice.

Used poorly, it becomes Babel with better Wi-Fi.

Babel, after all, was not simply a construction project. It was a spiritual condition. It was humanity saying, Look at us! It was ambition detached from humility. Capacity detached from communion. Intelligence detached from wisdom. It was the dream of reaching heaven without having to become holy.

That is the danger of AI. Not that machines will suddenly become human, but that human beings will become more machine-like: faster, colder, more efficient, less accountable, less patient with weakness, less reverent before mystery. And let us not forget that to be human, to be fully human, is the greatest of gifts.

The danger is not only that AI might lie. The danger is that we might stop caring whether truth matters, provided the answer sounds polished enough.

The danger is not only that AI might replace jobs, as with many agents of progress jobs are lost as new ones emerge. The danger is that we might quietly accept a world where human labour, skill, judgement and vocation are treated as inefficiencies to be eliminated.

The danger is not only that AI might generate images, essays, homilies, songs, prayers and policies. The danger is that we might forget the difference between producing content and bearing witness. We might forget how to answer questions, analyse, create and rationalise and dream.

There is a difference.

A machine can generate a reflection on grief. It cannot grieve. It can assemble a prayer but it cannot kneel. Whilst it can imitate compassion, it cannot sit bedside in silence offering the comfort of presence.

It can describe justice but it takes no risk for the marginalised and oppressed, it is commenting from the cheap and remote seat, untouched by the dirt in the arena.

This is why the ethical use of AI cannot be reduced to a policy document or a list of acceptable platforms. Yes, policies matter. Academic integrity matters, especially if we are to safeguard our capacity to think. Data protection matters. Human oversight matters enormously. But isn’t the deeper issue human formation?

What are we training ourselves to love?

If AI becomes our shortcut around thinking, then we have not gained intelligence; we have weakened attention. If it becomes our substitute for relationship, then we have not gained connection; we have automated avoidance. If it becomes our way of sounding wise without doing the slow work of becoming wise, then it has not enhanced our humanity; it has exposed our impatience with it.

Catholic tradition has always understood that tools are never merely tools. They sit inside moral worlds. They are funded by someone, designed by someone, trained on something, deployed for some purpose, and governed by some vision of the human person. A hammer in the hand of a carpenter builds a table. A hammer in the hand of a violent person becomes a weapon. The object matters, but the soul holding it matters more.

This is why Pope Leo’s encyclical matters. Magnifica Humanitas places AI where it belongs: not in the realm of gadgetry, but in the realm of anthropology. What is the human person? What is work? What is truth? What is freedom? What is responsibility? What must never be surrendered, even for convenience? The most dangerous technologies are not always the ones that look frightening. Sometimes they are the ones that make harm feel smooth.

A drone strike from a distance. A hiring algorithm that quietly filters out the poor. A surveillance system that calls itself safety. A classroom tool that rewards generic fluency over genuine thought. A chatbot that becomes easier to speak to than a parent, priest, teacher, friend or spouse. A company that speaks the language of ethics while building systems whose environmental, social and spiritual costs are paid by someone else.

Sin has always loved a respectable interface.

We need to sharpen our tools of discernment. Discernment asks who benefits, who is made invisible, are the poor being protected or rather are they being mined for data? It asks whether workers are being dignified or discarded. It asks whether students are being formed in wisdom or merely trained in output. It asks whether our tools are deepening communion or simply increasing production.

In schools, especially, this matters. AI is already in the room. It sits in pockets, search bars, study apps, plagiarism debates, lesson plans, marking tools and student imaginations. We cannot pretend it is not there. We also cannot surrender the room to it. The task of education is not to teach young people how to avoid AI or how to wield it within the parameters of the system. The task is to teach them how to remain human while using it.

That means teaching them to question the answer that arrives too easily. To check sources. To recognise bias. To protect the dignity of their own voice. To understand that efficiency is not the highest good. To know that a task completed without thought may still represent a failure of learning. To see that creativity is not merely the production of something new, but the offering of something true.

It also means adults need to stop pretending the issue is only student cheating. That is the comfortable version of the conversation, because it lets grown-ups play moral police while ignoring the larger economy of convenience in which we are all implicated.

Students using AI badly are not inventing dishonesty. They are often mirroring a world that has already taught them that output matters more than integrity, speed matters more than depth, and appearance matters more than truth.

We cannot ask young people to use AI ethically while modelling a culture that uses everything instrumentally: people, time, relationships, creation, even faith.

There is a very old temptation at work here. The temptation to know without loving. To create without responsibility. To command without listening. To build upward while forgetting those crushed at the base of the tower.

Babel is not ancient history. Babel is every system that mistakes scale for goodness. Babel is every institution that confuses control with wisdom. Babel is every platform that gathers the many into the service of the few. Babel is the dream of human greatness without human tenderness.

The alternative is not technophobia. The alternative is Jerusalem.

Not a romantic Jerusalem. Not a perfect city. Not a holy screensaver with soft lighting and harp music. Jerusalem, in the biblical imagination, is the place of worship, justice, memory and return. It is the city where scattered people are gathered, where walls are rebuilt not for domination but for protection, where worship and social responsibility belong together.

To use AI ethically is to choose Jerusalem over Babel.

It is to insist that technology must protect the vulnerable, not exploit them. It must strengthen human judgement, not replace it. It must serve truth, not manufacture plausibility. It must honour work, not treat workers as disposable. It must reduce burdens without erasing vocation. It must support creativity without stealing the human struggle that makes creativity meaningful.

Above all, it must remain a tool.

The moment a tool begins to shape our imagination of what a human being is, we are no longer just using it. We are being catechised by it.

That may be the most urgent theological issue of the AI age. Not whether machines can think, but whether humans will still know how to contemplate. Not whether machines can speak, but whether humans will still know how to listen. Not whether machines can create, but whether humans will still know how to receive life as gift.

Catholic faith begins with a claim that should make every empire, algorithm and efficiency consultant deeply uncomfortable: the human person is not useful before they are loved. A baby is not efficient. The elderly are not efficient. The sick are not efficient. Grief is not efficient. Prayer is not efficient. Forgiveness is not efficient. Education, if it is real, is often gloriously inefficient.

So is love.

AI will not decide whether we become more human.

We will.

We can build Babel again. We are very good at it. We have the servers, the capital, the ambition, the branding and the press releases.

Or we can rebuild Jerusalem.

More slowly. More truthfully. With human hands still visible in the work. With room for the poor at the table. With Sabbath written into the architecture. With technology disarmed of domination and placed, humbly, at the service of life.

The future will not be saved by artificial intelligence.

It will be saved, if it is saved at all, by magnificent humanity: wounded, limited, responsible, loved, and finally willing to become wise.