AI is reshaping humanity, and Israel has a divine opportunity to light the way - opinion

“To see a world in a grain of sand / and a heaven in a wild flower…”

More than two centuries ago, William Blake opened “Auguries of Innocence” with one of the most extraordinary descriptions of human perception ever written.

The genius of those lines lies in Blake’s insistence that we can encounter the infinite through the finite, the divine through the mundane.

A grain of sand is not simply a grain of sand. A wildflower is not simply a flower. What matters is our capacity to see beyond them.

Blake also hinted at what would happen to us if we didn’t use our own God-given brains to interpret reality when he wrote, “We are led to believe a lie when we see with and not thro’ the eye.”

Today, I wonder whether artificial intelligence is beginning to disturb that delicate balance.

Perhaps the warning for our generation should be: We are led to believe a lie when we see with AI and no longer thro’ AI.

There is an important distinction.

Technology has always helped human beings see farther: the telescope extended our eyes; the telephone extended our voices; the computer extended our ability to calculate, organize, and remember.

In 1957, a year before I was born, Max Frisch wrote in his novel that “Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” If it was already becoming clear back then, what does this say about us today?

AI is different. Increasingly, it does not merely extend human capabilities; it interprets experience for us.

We ask it what something means. We ask it what we should think. We ask it how we should respond.

More and more people ask AI about their relationships, fears, loneliness, careers, and personal dilemmas, the kinds of conversations once reserved for spouses, friends, psychologists, rabbis, priests, or simply the private conversation within ourselves.

The numbers suggest this is no longer hypothetical.

A 2025 national survey found that nearly three-quarters of American teenagers had already used AI companions, and one-third of teen users had chosen an AI companion rather than another human being for an important or serious conversation.

A year later, another national survey found that more than one-third of young AI users were discussing their feelings and personal problems with AI. Of those, one in four said that sometimes AI understood them better than most people.

Perhaps we should stop asking whether people will someday form meaningful relationships with machines. They already are. The more difficult question is what happens to the human relationships – and the private acts of introspection – that those conversations begin to replace.

The statistics establish adoption and behavior; they do not yet establish widespread replacement of spouses, therapists, rabbis, or priests.

However, they definitely present a warning as to where humanity is heading, as well as an opportunity for Israel to play the role of a “light among nations” as predicted in the Bible.

There are enormous benefits in this. I use AI myself.

Indeed, I find myself increasingly fascinated by what it allows me to create. I have always enjoyed painting and visual expression. Today I can describe an idea and collaborate with AI to transform something that existed only in my imagination into a sophisticated graphic.

It feels extraordinarily creative.

But whose creativity is it, and to whom do spiritual and emotional benefits accrue?

That question increasingly troubles me.

After personally having to be present at numerous terror scenes during the years of the Intifada, given my role as a strategic advisor to the Homeland Security Ministry, painting provided me with a critical emotional and spiritual release of the horrors I had witnessed.

The art I have created with AI has never provided me with the same benefits.

When I write, does the computer function like the pen I once held, simply recording my thoughts? Or has it become a participant in forming those thoughts?

Am I expressing myself, or am I participating in an expression created jointly by myself and a machine?

And does the distinction matter?

I believe it does.

Not giving up on humanity

Consider prayer.

Jewish tradition offers a particularly interesting way of understanding the term tefila, prayer. The Hebrew for “to pray,” lehitpalel, is reflexive. Prayer is therefore not understood simply as asking God to change circumstances; it is also intended to change the person who is praying.

We step away from the noise surrounding us. We confront our fears, desires, gratitude, shortcomings, and dependence upon something greater than ourselves.

The apparent inefficiency of prayer may therefore be precisely the point.

What happens if I ask AI to do that work for me?

The question sounds absurd. Surely nobody would send an AI agent to synagogue or to church to pray on their behalf.

But consider how quickly other seemingly absurd possibilities are becoming normal.

Why attend an hour-long lecture if my AI agent can absorb it and relay the important points in three minutes? Why struggle through a difficult book if AI can explain its argument? Why wrestle with what a writer means when a machine can tell me?

And eventually: Why wrestle with myself?

That may be the real danger.

The problem is not that AI will become human. The problem is that human beings may gradually surrender some of the experiences through which we become human. The most popular fear is of an AI-influenced apocalypse.

Years ago, I had an experience that has stayed with me.

As an undergraduate, I was invited to attend graduate classes at the City University of New York taught by Prof. Bargman, who served during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as the Political Affairs officer within the UN’s Disarmament Affairs Division.

I asked him a question that concerned me.

During those terrifying days, when the United States and Soviet Union stood frighteningly close to nuclear war, how could anyone be confident that one side would not ultimately push the button?

His answer was remarkably simple: we had “confidence that mankind would not give up on its humanity.”

Think about that statement now, in 2026, and how it might be evolving.

For all our intelligence systems, algorithms, predictive models, and extraordinary technologies, the ultimate safeguard protecting civilization was something no computer can guarantee: human judgment, restraint, and an understanding of the consequences of our actions.

Humanity protected humanity.

However, when it comes to protecting our souls and what makes us human, are we equally concerned?

This has particular significance for Israel.

We speak proudly of being the start-up nation. We are innovators precisely because we refuse to accept limitations. We ask how things can be made faster, smarter, and more efficient.

But Jewish civilization has always asked another question as well: Must all aspects of our lives be smarter, faster, and more efficient?

Our tradition deliberately preserves experiences that are slow and inefficient.

Shabbat interrupts perceived productivity. Prayer interrupts activity. Study requires argument rather than merely obtaining an answer. Jewish learning celebrates the question almost as much as the solution.

Perhaps there is wisdom here that is becoming more relevant, not less.

Israel’s aspiration to be a light unto the nations in the age of AI should therefore not mean simply producing better technology. Perhaps our contribution should also include insisting that technology remain subordinate to human purpose.

AI should help us think, but not relieve us of thinking.

It should help us create, but not make us indifferent to who is doing the creating.

It can help us understand prayer, but it cannot pray for us, because the purpose of prayer is not simply the words produced. It is what happens to the human being struggling to say them.

Blake looked at a grain of sand and saw a world.

The challenge confronting us is not whether AI will eventually be able to explain precisely what Blake meant. It almost certainly will.

The challenge is whether, after receiving that perfect explanation, we will still stop long enough to pick up the grain of sand ourselves.

And see the world within it.

The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Follow him on X: @jeffkahn2020.