AI can organize, refine, and assist. But it can never supply identity
INa world obsessed with intelligence — measuring it, categorizing it, outsourcing it, and now even automating it — we often overlook the most basic prerequisite for it. Before a child can think creatively, reason deeply, or express ideas of his own, he must first know one essential truth: that he is not interchangeable. Real intelligence does not begin with information or skill. It begins with identity.
Rabbi Yisroel Beyda, a rebbi in Yeshiva Ketana of Waterbury, once shared a thought with me. “We need to teach our children to use R.I. — real intelligence.”
He was not speaking about academic achievement or test scores, and certainly not about artificial intelligence. He meant something far more fundamental: teaching children to think from within, using their own minds, hearts, creativity, and neshamos.
Over time, I’ve come to believe that R.I. can also be understood as “real identity.” The two are inseparable. A child cannot think independently unless he first feels that he exists independently, that he matters as a distinct person. Intelligence, in its truest sense, is not the ability to retrieve information or produce polished output. It is the capacity to think, choose, and express from within. And that capacity cannot develop without a sense of self.
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