Podcasts · Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)

3 Oct 2026 · 13 min

The new Tower of Babel, and its builders are becoming like gods to us. The bigger threat isn't killer robots; it's how much of your own mind you've already handed over.

I joined Mike Slater on Politics By Faith (The First) to talk about AI, faith, and the people building it.

We cover: why Babel is always the city AND the tower, how the same AI that discovers drugs can build super viruses, what I'm seeing in my own classroom as term begins, why cognitive offloading scares me more than Terminators, and the one thing AI still can't do without us.

AI belongs in your hands as a thinking partner, never the primary creator.

Chapters:

00:00 Mike Slater introduces Brian Keating (cosmologist, not cosmetologist)

00:37 Why AI is the Tower of Babel — the city and the tower

02:05 The double-edged sword: new drugs vs. super viruses

02:57 Altman, Amodei, Musk — "they become like gods to us"

03:42 "Regulate us, take us over" — who really wants that

04:23 A scientist weighs progress: "I'm an accelerationist"

05:19 AI as a curiosity amplifier, not a shortcut

06:04 First day of class at UC San Diego — the war over AI

07:22 Thinking partner, not primary creator — and the nuclear analogy

08:20 Cognitive offloading — how many phone numbers do you remember?

09:17 The worldview of the people running AI

10:35 Why I'm not a doomer — and what to actually do (local models)

———

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Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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