By Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, JNS
As the Chassidic masters used to urge, have faith and trust; the course of world development is for the good.
As Brussels finalizes a new AI code of practice, set to be released in weeks, governments across Europe are waking up to the urgency of regulation. Globally, we are seeing humanoid AI robots rolled out on Chinese production lines. U.S. politics is embroiled in issues, and the U.K. Parliament is deep in debate regarding AI’s use of copyrighted material, particularly by big tech firms.
AI is reshaping our lives. We are perhaps sleepwalking into an algorithmic future we barely understand. Is there a Jewish perspective on this?
Some contemporary Jewish scholars have noted the danger of losing the power to write, of inner effort and self-expression. Man, as the Bible opens by describing, was created in the Divine image, and for some Jewish scholars, from the Middle Ages onwards, that Divine image means the ability to choose, to have agency and power. AI is robbing us of that. It has removed our ability to act as free agents, making decisions for ourselves. Studying sacred texts and Jewish law is an activity that takes pride of place in Judaism. For Maimonides and other great Jewish philosophers, the Divine image we humans are gifted with is our intellect—the power to compute, contemplate and soar with our brains to ever higher abstract worlds of transcendent thinking.
AI, it has been argued, is an assault on all this, harming both interpretations of our Divine image, no less. AI has taken away our power to choose and think, to weigh up issues ourselves, and to consider concepts and ideas. Instead, we simply type a prompt about anything we need to know and out pumps a long, already worked-out answer to our most vexing moral or intellectual quandaries.
This concern, of course, spills over into deciding on intricate matters of Jewish law. Jews have always been legalistic, rigorous and detailed, prized as the “People of the Book.” As the late historian Paul Johnson noted, the “ritual spirit” of Judaism and its “punctilious observance” in embracing laws governing all areas of life have been its “strength.”
What, though, comes of Jewish law with the development of AI? Can ChatGPT rule on matters of Jewish law, deem food kosher or unkosher, or instruct on how best to perform a commandment? Where is the place for robots in religious decision-making? Is ChatGPT to be equated with the famed, legendary creature, the Golem? Or is it altogether different?
These questions lie unanswered as yet. However, I am sure most rabbis would agree that Jewish law was revealed, and is to be debated and expanded exclusively by human minds and hearts. Torah wisdom, as the Talmud famously declares, is “not in the heavens.” Instead, each person is enjoined to “toil in his tent,” to study and conquer the material. Ruling on ambiguous areas of Jewish law, on cases that require argumentation and nuance, I believe, must remain in the purview of human beings, however labor-saving ChatGPT may become at plumbing the depths of the rabbinic corpus.
However, as a tool for work and for helping people gain a livelihood, AI can certainly be positive. As the outstanding Orthodox theologian and Talmudist of 19th-century America, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, argued in his lectures, technological and economic revolution is even a religious task of conquering the natural world and improving human civilization. Again, this was one of the first tasks entrusted to primordial man in the Bible: to cultivate the earth and control it. AI certainly fulfils that mark, now being rolled out in health-care systems, manufacturing, security services and more.
Industries will adapt. It is still a fraught issue. From self-driving cars to automated accountancy services, AI will certainly shake up jobs, entire markets and products in an uncertain and wholesale way. Yet arguably, as time progresses, people’s work will eventually adjust so that AI will be a tool that will help, and not hinder, improving people’s work.
The sages praised a person who works for his or her bread. Labor—insofar as it grants human independence, continuity and a flourishing society—is a force for the good. Yet that does not mean we should not be efficient, trying to improve the way we work. Our daily prayers are full of requests for a healthy, positive life, for bountiful blessings of rainfall and produce, to be graciously showered, really, with the means to live. In our less agrarian economy today, is not the equivalent of that helpful technologies for us to harness well?
As Rabbi Professor Jacob J. Schachter has researched, Jews benefited greatly and were part of the print revolution; the digital revolution and artificial intelligence should be the same. As he writes, “history would suggest that rather than resist steel because it can be beaten into swords, we do better to embrace it and make ploughshares instead.”
All of that notwithstanding, the great dangers screens can have on the minds of children, who just forming neurologically, obviously need to be given great thought. I am in favor of banning smartphones in schools, as governments are increasingly recognizing, and as Orthodox Jewish communities the world over have always understood. Professor Jonathan Haidt, for decades, has advocated this.
But still, humankind does not need to be afraid. We should, of course, maintain our agency, decision-making and brains. As the Lithuanian rabbis of previous generations were wont to remark: “The Torah’s first mitzvah is to think!” Torah study and Jewish legal decisions should remain in our hands and heads. Yet as the Chassidic masters used to urge, have faith and trust; the course of world development is for the good. AI can be of great benefit to us—in our work, in developing our economies and for society as a whole.
To return to Paul Johnson, he finishes his magisterial work on Jewish history with the accolade that the Jews spent millennia “writing their role” in this world, tenaciously believing humanity to have agency and life to have purpose. We should not forget that, or turn our Jewish writing and role into prompts for ChatGPT.
Let’s not sleepwalk with the crutches of AI, but walk stridently with it, using it where we should, yet keeping our Divine image intact all the same.
