The Tower of Babel is the biblical story of how humanity, united by a single language and a single ambition, attempts to build a tower to heaven. The project ends in collapse, with God punishing the builders for their hubris by fragmenting humanity into different languages and cultures. The parable, which Pope Leo XIV explicitly invokes in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, bears an uncanny resemblance to AI. Will the technology be humankind's salvation, as its evangelists claim, or will it lead to damnation, as sceptics fear?
Human civilisation is already well into an AI arms race to write the script of the future in code. Technology companies are spending billions of dollars to create systems that promise to transform knowledge, work, warfare, politics, and perhaps human consciousness itself. Public discourse oscillates between utopianism and panic. And now, one of the world's oldest institutions has entered the conversation to warn about a race to the bottom.
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