The Most Important Story No One Is Talking About

Artificial intelligence is the most important story in the world right now. Full stop.

It’s not crypto. It’s not inflation. It’s not even the war in Gaza and Israel. It’s the rapid, exponential growth of AI—a transformation unfolding in real time.

And yet, somehow, it’s the one subject that remains trapped under a thick layer of superficiality, especially among those who should know better: intellectuals, public figures, spiritual leaders.

Why do I say this? Because of the magnitude of what’s happening.

This is not another tech cycle. This isn’t the iPhone. This isn’t social media.

This is the emergence of a new kind of intelligence—superhuman in capacity, foreign in form, and already reshaping the world beneath our feet. If we don’t start speaking about it with sophistication and moral seriousness, we will forfeit the future to those who do.

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The Real Problem Isn’t the Tech

Let’s be blunt: most AI commentary is either naïvely utopian or reflexively apocalyptic.

You’ve got tech evangelists insisting AI will “solve everything,” as if infinite intelligence implies infinite wisdom.

Then there are the Luddites, crying “Skynet!” without understanding a single technical or philosophical nuance.

Both camps miss the point.

The question isn’t “Is AI good or bad?” The real question is:
Who shapes it—and to what end?

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The World Is Already Being Rewritten

AI is redrawing the boundaries of the economy, education, creativity, and language.

It’s outperforming elite students on standardized exams. It’s composing music, writing code, translating ancient texts, and even shaping our everyday speech. (See NPR’s recent coverage on how AI is altering language patterns.)

And yet…

Where are the moral voices?

Where are the rabbis, the pastors, the philosophers, the theologians?

Mostly silent.

When they do speak, it’s often with anodyne warnings about “responsible use”—as if AI were a new kind of blender that just needs a better user manual.

We don’t need platitudes.
We need ethical frameworks: sovereignty, agency, personhood, and soul.

We need to clarify what it means to be human—before that definition is quietly replaced by something programmable.

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A Different Kind of Question

We must begin to ask better questions.

Not just “What can this machine do?” but
“What is it for?”
And more urgently: “What are we for?”

Here’s the way I see it:

AI may be our best partner in building a better world.

In Jewish tradition, there’s a concept called Tikkun Olam—the repair of the world. It’s the mystical idea that humanity is a co-creator with God, participating in the healing of what is broken.

It is both spiritual and practical, both ancient and forward-looking.

And perhaps—if we are wise, intentional, and morally grounded—AI can join us in that work.

Just as we collaborate with the divine in restoring creation, so too this new intelligence might collaborate with us.

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This Is Not a Fantasy

That’s not utopianism. It’s a challenge. A calling.

Because AI will enable us to tackle complexity at an unprecedented scale—climate models, disease research, educational access, economic coordination, even spiritual formation.

Learning about AI isn’t optional anymore.
It’s not just the job of engineers and technologists.

Rabbis and pastors. Theologians and educators. Parents and artists.
We all have a stake in the code being written—because that code is building the moral architecture of our future.

With AI, we’re not just designing faster machines.
We’re designing the shape of the world to come.

If we don’t bring our full selves to that task—if we don’t root it in ancient wisdom, intellectual depth, and moral courage—we will find ourselves governed by systems we neither understand nor control.

But if we do...

If we embrace the moment, ask the right questions, and step into the work,
then AI becomes not just the story of technological progress—
but a chapter in the larger story of human purpose.

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What Comes Next

That’s the story I want to help write.

And in the months ahead, I’ll be doing just that—here, with you.

Let’s bring wisdom to the frontier. Let’s ask the better questions.
And let’s make sure this new intelligence serves not just progress,
but a future worth living in.