AI x The Tower of Babel

Most people spend time on the first verse of Genesis. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." It’s one of the most quoted lines in the Bible. But there’s a short, strange story later in Genesis—Chapter 11—that’s worth revisiting today.

It’s called the Tower of Babel.

Here’s the story in a few lines:

Once upon a time, everyone on Earth spoke the same language. They worked together, moved as one people, and decided to build a city with a tower that would reach the heavens. “Let’s make a name for ourselves,” they said, “so we don’t get scattered across the Earth.” But God came down to see what they were doing. He wasn’t pleased. He said, “If they can do this now, speaking one language, then nothing they try to do will be impossible for them.” So he scrambled their speech. Confused their understanding. Scattered them across the earth. The tower was never finished. And the place was called Babel—because it was there that language was broken open.

At first glance, it’s a story about why we speak different languages. But beneath that, it’s something deeper: a warning about the dangers of total unity, the seduction of limitless ambition, and the value of difference.

Credit: Alexander Mikhalchyk (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Fear of Being Scattered

The builders feared one thing: being dispersed. So they built a monument to themselves—a tower that would pierce the heavens and keep them united. That desire feels familiar. Today, we fear fragmentation too. We want clean systems, common platforms, shared vocabularies, and global standards.

From code and APIs to AI and the internet, we’re building our own towers. Systems where everything connects. Everyone speaks the same “language”—whether that’s a programming language, a political ideology, or an algorithmic feed.

And just like the people of Babel, we say: “Let’s make a name for ourselves. Let’s not get lost. Let’s stay together.”

When Sameness Becomes Dangerous

But God doesn’t celebrate the unity in the Babel story. He sees it as dangerous. Why?

Not because humans are building something. But because they’re doing it with one voice, one plan, one ambition. In that kind of sameness, anything is possible—even destruction and empire.

The lesson here is clear to me: when everyone speaks the same language, power concentrates, freedom vanishes, and imagination is replaced by obedience.

In modern terms, we could say: when everything flows through the same model, the same platform, the same corporate stack, freedom disappears.

AI and the New Babel

Today’s AI systems are becoming a kind of digital Babel. They take all human knowledge, flatten it into tokens, and return it in a single voice. Whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, these systems promise to understand everything and speak to anyone.

But at what cost?

We risk building tools that erase human texture, that smooth over difference, that make every question sound the same and every answer feel correct—even when it’s not. Centralization creates risks, but uniformity erases difference and weakens our ability to think freely.

The tower is being built again. And once again, it’s being built to make a name for ourselves.

The Gift of Confusion

God’s response in Babel wasn’t fire or punishment. It was confusion. He scrambled speech. He made communication harder. But in doing so, he protected the world from the dangers of one language, one dream, one unchecked system.

In our time, this might mean choosing openness over control, messiness over perfection, and many voices over one.

Real diversity isn’t about looking different while thinking the same. It means bringing different ways of seeing the world—even when they clash—and still choosing to share space, to listen, and to live together without needing to agree on everything.

After Babel

There’s one more twist to the story. Later in the Bible, at Pentecost, a group of people begin speaking in many languages—and yet, somehow, everyone understands.

This isn’t Babel all over again. It’s a different vision—where many languages resonate together in harmony. Where people gather, not to dominate, but to understand. Where difference is not erased, but embraced.

Maybe that’s the future we need: a world with many voices, many visions, and enough humility to keep listening even when we don’t fully understand.