Fostering family life alongside the emergence of AI

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — For decades, new communications technologies have brought outside voices into the home. Artificial intelligence moves that common pattern in a whole new direction: the technology itself can answer questions and offer counsel. If advice and reassurance can be supplied on demand by a machine, what does this moment reveal about the deeper purpose of the family?

“Artificial intelligence and new media can bring distances closer, but they cannot create trust on their own,” said Hatem El-Hady, a representative of the Bahá’í International Community’s Cairo Office. “They can transmit knowledge, but they cannot, by themselves, cultivate wisdom. They can increase communication, but they cannot create belonging, a spirit of service, or a sense of responsibility toward others.”

Mr. El-Hady highlighted how this distinction points to a deeper challenge: how families can cultivate the qualities and relationships that enable people to use those technologies wisely and direct them toward the common good.

This idea ran through a series of discussions at the Third International Dialogue of Civilizations and Tolerance Conference, recently held in Abu Dhabi, where academics, researchers, faith representatives, youth, and other social actors explored the relationship between family life, emerging technologies, and social cohesion.

The members of the Office of Public Affairs of the Bahá’ís of the United Arab Emirates contributed to the discussions by participating in and moderating several panels at the conference.

“The family is not merely a social unit,” stated Roeia Thabet of the Office of Public Affairs. It is the first environment, she explained, in which people learn what it means to live with others, and where qualities such as love, justice, compassion, cooperation, equality, and mutual respect can first take root.

Seen from this perspective, the family is an essential social space that can prepare people to participate constructively in the wider life of society.

This understanding also places the family within a wider pattern of community life. Drawing on the experience of Bahá’í communities in the Arab region, Mr. El-Hady noted that families flourish when they are not isolated, but instead connected with others through spaces for service and conversation. It is through these interactions, he said, that values cease to remain abstractions and find expression in daily life.

The growing presence of artificial intelligence in everyday life gives new urgency to the need to consider the part that families can play in shaping how people relate to others beyond their kin.

For Sama Tabrizi, a representative of the Bahá’ís of the UAE, it also brings into sharper focus what must remain at the center of that environment: the nobility of the human being. “Whatever comes—whether from technology or otherwise—we need to hold on to preserving this human nobility,” she said.

Her reflection points to a wider principle underlying Bahá’í community-building endeavors: spiritual qualities such as consultation, cooperation, service, and concern for others are not acquired through instruction alone. They develop through patterns of life which foster understanding and in which people act together and assume increasing responsibility for the needs of their neighborhoods.

As these capacities nurtured in family and community life find expression beyond their immediate setting, concerns tend to widen to neighbors and eventually society.

This outward movement has also been central to the Office of Public Affairs’ participation in the discourse on family and social cohesion. It rests on a conception of the family that is neither inward-looking nor self-contained, but oriented toward service and increasingly conscious of humanity’s essential oneness.

Mr. El-Hady described artificial intelligence and new media as “tools that reflect the values we instill in them.” Where family and community life give qualities such as trust, justice, and responsibility practical expression, he said, those same patterns can help shape how technology is used and developed.

The conference coincided with the UAE’s designation of 2026 as the Year of the Family. The Office of Public Affairs’ participation in the conference forms part of its ongoing exploration of how family life can contribute to social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society.