AI can organize, refine, and assist. But it can never supply identity

IN

a 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.

That idea crystallized for me one Shabbos morning in Camp Romimu, where I spend my summers. The early sunlight shimmered across the grounds, still holding traces of an overnight thunderstorm. The air was crisp, fresh with the scent of rain-soaked earth, and the camp, usually bursting with youthful noise, rested in a rare and peaceful stillness. As I walked into the dining room for my pre-Shacharis coffee, I noticed it was nearly empty, except for a few boys from the special-needs bunk lingering quietly.

That’s when I noticed Yanky.

He was standing by the coffee station holding his own jar. Not just any jar — a large container of Taster’s Choice, with his name written boldly across the label in thick block letters. Curious, I asked him why he brought his own coffee when camp had plenty available.

He looked up at me, almost surprised by the question, and answered simply, “But this one has my name on it.”

Yanky wasn’t talking about coffee. He was expressing something far deeper. He was telling me, in the purest way possible, that being named matters. Being recognized matters. When a child feels that he is seen as someone specific and irreplaceable, he begins to see himself that way as well.

I saw the same truth play out again later that day. I watched Rabbi Armo Kuessous, the head counselor, standing with a group of new campers. As he prepared to leave, he paused and challenged himself to name every boy in the group. One by one, he called them out. With each name he called, a boy’s face lit up, his posture straightened, and something inside him visibly shifted. There was no speech and no reward —just the quiet power of being called by name.

Recognition does more than make a child feel good. It shapes how he understands himself.

ITbrought to mind a powerful story about my great-grandfather, Rabbi Leib Heber ztz”l, who for many years traveled throughout western Pennsylvania, bringing Yiddishkeit to jails, hospitals, and homes. When he arrived at a facility one Sunday, he discovered that only one of the original Jewish residents, an elderly woman named Charlene, remained. She was upstairs, and the public-address system was broken, so the staff could not announce his arrival to her.

When the rabbi’s aide went to get her, she refused. The rabbi himself called to her, but still she refused.

Finally, he went upstairs and gently said, “I have a kosher salami sandwich for you. Come down — I’m here for you.”

But Charlene remained unmoved. Then she broke down and cried, “You didn’t call my name. You didn’t announce my name!”

The pasuk in Tehillim (147:3–4) captures this so powerfully: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the stars and calls each one by name.” Some mefarshim explain that every star has a unique name because every star has a unique purpose. Sometimes, the deepest healing comes not from answers or solutions, but from being recognized.

Technology has always shaped how we think. There was a time when the phone company charged for calls by the minute, and people planned in advance what they would say. Before GPS and Waze, one had to map a route, ask for directions, weigh alternatives — Route A or Route B — and think things through. Each new advance brought convenience, but also quietly removed a layer of thought.

Artificial intelligence may represent the most far-reaching stage of that progression. It doesn’t only assist thinking; it tempts us to replace it. It not only takes away effort; it takes away creativity, struggle, and choice. When thinking itself is outsourced, the result is not just intellectual weakness — it is a loss of identity. Less thinking, diminished creativity, fewer moments of genuine human interaction — and ultimately, a weakened sense of self.

When children are rarely asked to think, imagine, or wrestle with ideas, they can slowly stop seeing themselves as thinkers. And when a person no longer experiences himself as a thinker, he begins to feel replaceable.

This awareness followed me back into the classroom as well.

One afternoon, I walked into my afternoon ELA class and announced that we would be writing an essay. Predictably, there were groans. Writing often feels like rules without meaning. But when the boys were given a prompt that invited them to imagine, choose, and articulate their own values, the room grew quiet. For nearly half an hour, they wrote — not because they had to, but because they had something of their own to say.

They still had to pay attention to mechanics, but that was no longer the point. What mattered was that each student was being asked to think from within. They were not filling in a template. They were discovering that their thoughts mattered.

That, too, is Real Intelligence.

We live in an age overflowing with input — information, opinions, images, and now artificial intelligence. AI can organize, refine, and assist. But it can never supply identity. That comes only when a child is treated as an individual. When he is called by name. When his thoughts are invited. When his inner world is taken seriously.

Being called by name does not make a child intelligent. But it allows him to see himself as someone whose thoughts matter. And once a child believes that his thoughts matter, he begins to think, choose, and express — which is the soil in which real intelligence grows.

Yanky’s coffee jar with his name on it was not about coffee. It was about existence. And in a world increasingly tempted to let machines think for us, the greatest gift we can give a child is the knowledge that his real identity — and therefore his real intelligence — still matters.

Real intelligence begins the moment a child realizes he is not replaceable.

Rabbi Moshe Dov Heber is a rebbi at Yeshiva K’tana of Waterbury, where he also teaches personal finance, and a division head in Camp Romimu.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1098)