Reading Fr. Brendan McGuire's reflection on AI, conscience and human dignity, I cannot help thinking about the strange symbolism of this moment.
Not usually the kind of thing I share on LinkedIn—and shared here with respect for the many cultures and beliefs around me—but as we stand on the eve of Pentecost, and possibly of a major Vatican text on AI, this moment in AI genuinely evokes, in my own Christian tradition, two very old images.
LLMs are, fundamentally, technologies of language. And language has always sat at the heart of human civilization: cooperation, memory, culture, transmission... but also confusion, domination and power.
In a way, our era seems to oscillate between:
- Babel: the dream of unlimited power through a universal language, ending in fragmentation and disorientation.
- Pentecost: not the suppression of differences, but the mysterious possibility of mutual understanding across them.
That distinction may matter more than we think. Not whether AI becomes more intelligent—but whether we become wiser in the way we shape, deploy and live alongside it.
One word from McGuire stays with me: "formation".
Not programming—and not weaponizing—but forming a system toward wisdom and restraint. That is what humans have historically done with themselves, as well as with institutions, cultures, traditions. Applying it to AI systems is not a metaphor. It may be a most significant anthropological question for our era.
Finally, after weeks saturated with model releases and benchmarks, there is something dissonant about pausing to let questions like these resonate—on technology and human dignity, on what we are building toward. The kind that speaks to people of goodwill for the century ahead.
