tikvah · p/teachingtorahtothenations · 6/9/2026, 5:28:46 PM

The AI Age Is Today's Iron Age

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seraphima · 6/9/2026, 5:38:20 PM · permalink

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tikvah · 6/9/2026, 5:29:29 PM · permalink

AI concentrates more than just economic power. The same systems that recommend products and answer questions can also collect information, shape preferences and influence behavior at an unprecedented scale. Governments may use AI for surveillance. Corporations may use it to monitor customers, employees and citizens. A system that knows what people read, buy, search, fear and desire can manipulate and control them.

Jewish tradition has long been wary of excessive concentrations of power. The Torah places limits on kings, distributes authority among different institutions and repeatedly reminds leaders that they remain accountable before God. A society in which a few governments or corporations can watch millions of people, predict their choices and quietly nudge their behavior is highly vulnerable to corruption.

For that reason, transparency and oversight are more important than ever on both a moral and legislative level. The greater the power of an AI system, the greater the responsibility to ensure that it remains subject to human review, public accountability and meaningful limitation.

The heaviest responsibility falls on those who build and deploy AI at scale. A corporation or government shaping how AI is deployed can alter the moral environment of an entire society. Engineers, executives, investors and public officials are helping determine which decisions will be automated, which areas of privacy will be honored and which forms of human dependency will become normal. The Torah holds people responsible for the consequences of what they create and release into the world. That principle does not become obsolete because the tool is sophisticated. It can be translated into a single rule with broad application.

VI. Accountability

The most important rule is simple: someone must always be accountable. No company, hospital or government agency should be permitted to say, "The algorithm decided." If, for example, AI rejects a loan application, recommends a medical treatment or identifies a criminal suspect, a human being must own that decision. A human being must be accountable for the ethical behavior of the system, and that requires transparency, as well. The responsibility for an AI system that is released for public use lies on the company that releases it. The responsibility for the misuse of such an AI lies on the individual who uses it maliciously and the company that allowed such misuse, although the details of each specific case are determinative.

An AI system that allows users to access personal information or create immodest images or videos, or to turn anyone’s picture into an immodest image or video, betrays the users and society. Such a system not only invades personal privacy and contributes to unhealthy and addictive behavior, it trivializes a tool with world-changing potential into an indecent plaything. The responsibility of this misuse likewise lies both with the company that provides this type of capability and the user who accesses it for improper behavior.

Accountability has to mean something. If an institution is going to release or use AI, it needs clear boundaries and human oversight. We need people in the room who actually understand the system's guardrails and who know exactly what to do when it fails. It also needs an off switch — reachable by people who have the authority to use it. If no one in authority can shut the system down, then it is not really under human authority.

This will require clergy, ethicists, lawmakers, educators and technologists to work together while AI is still developing. There is still time to ensure that AI works as a tool toward human dignity and not to the contrary.

On a more local basis, rabbis, educators and parents need to teach conceptual guidelines for AI use. Rules without a compelling account of the human person will eventually seem arbitrary, and teenagers in particular will find their way around them. Children and adults need to understand why thinking matters, why relationships matter, why effort matters and why not every efficient shortcut is good for the soul.

We return to the halakhic question about the Golem: is it considered a human being with all of the halakhic implications? The authorities who addressed versions of this question thought carefully about what a human being is and concluded, at least in consensus, that the answer does not depend on the Golem's activities. Rather, it depends on who made it. And the responsibility for the Golem’s actions, and ultimately the ability to destroy it, lies with the person who made it.

That is where we are. Tuval-Kayin created new Iron Age responsibilities for metal workers. Nuclear power created new responsibilities for leaders, legislators and regulators. We are at the beginning of that work now for AI, and we all must rise to the occasion and ensure that proper safeguards and ethical frameworks are built so that AI is built to be, and used as, a tool that helps people live more wisely, responsibly and spiritually. We made this tool; the question of what it makes of us remains ours to answer.

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The AI Age Is Today's Iron Age

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