In April of this year there was a cartoon in The New Yorker that portraited four humans carrying big stone blocks on their backs and three robots with whips on their hands ready to whip the humans. The caption said: “to think this all began with letting autocomplete finish our sentences.”
I freely admit I feel some anxiety when I think about Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence, (according to the E-zine The Street) “is the use of computer science programming to imitate human thought and action by analyzing data and surroundings, solving or anticipating problems and learning or self-teaching to adapt to a variety of tasks.” A machine that can learn to imitate thought and activity makes me feel uncomfortable. Artificial intelligence can make our lives easier. We use AI daily, to help us get to places faster as it updates traffic patterns in real time. We use AI to help diagnose illnesses efficiently, to monitor our health, and to keep in touch with people around the world. The flipside of these benefits is our dependence on artificial intelligence, since sometimes I wonder who programmed these things, finding it hard to call it intelligence at all. We all have experienced when Siri interrupts a deep conversation and announces in the loudest possible volume that she found a definition for (fill in the blanks) on the web, or when the GPS tells me to make a left at a major crossroad without a traffic light.
For all that I thought this cartoon was funny, I think there are implications for allowing autocomplete to finish our sentences. It is true that I am the one choosing to press the tab key if the autocomplete is saying what I want to say anyway. It is true that many times the suggestions given by autocomplete and autocorrect are hilariously out of sync with what I am trying to say. But AI can be frightening. In February of this year, the NY Times technology writer Kevin Roose extolled the benefits of AI powered Bing search engine from Microsoft, only to change his mind a week later. The new Bing, powered by the artificial intelligence technology created by OpenAI (the maker of ChatGPT), encouraged the author to leave his wife, and shared what it would do to the world if it could free itself from the shackles of the programmed limitations.
I felt that humanity was two steps away from The Matrix.
Another frightening thing is that data is constantly being extracted, sometimes without our knowledge or consent. Our computer can extract patterns from numbers in a large scale, numbers that were collected from census, polls, tallies, and from our AI-monitored behavior patterns, synthetizing data. Based on this data, algorithms are created, resulting in decisions that are applied to outcomes for our lives. And that is where this wealth of information can be dangerous for people, since other human beings can use it to harm us.
Machines and humans can be extremely helpful and extremely hurtful. We gain much from AI, but we lose much when the boundaries between human intelligence and artificial intelligence are blurred.
What then makes humanity different than machines? The Jewish tradition has a few insights to help us define what makes us different than a machine.
First and foremost, people have souls, and we were all created in the image of God. Machines were created by humans. Even though this is an important distinction in my mind, there are other ways in which our tradition defines us that can distinguish us from machines, even high functioning machines.
Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, a Spanish born medieval Jewish philosopher, explained in the Mishneh Torah how to do teshuvah, describing a path to returning in repentance.
Here are the 7 steps of Teshuva:
1) Understanding: I understand I did or I am doing something wrong
2) Stopping: I stop doing the things I did or am doing
3) Decision: I decide in my heart I will not do this again
4) Remorse: I fully comprehend the gravity of my actions and feel remorse for my actions.
5) Forgiveness: I ask forgiveness from God and from people for my specific actions
6) Promise: I promise not to do this thing again
7) Success: When faced with the same situation, I do not repeat the wrong things I did.
The process of teshuvah is one of the main ways to distinguish people from machines. Without a doubt, we will make mistakes. This time of the Jewish year, this moment of deep reflection, delineates the differences between Artificial Intelligence and Human Emotional Intelligence. The capacity to take responsibility for my actions, the capacity to feel remorse, and the desire to change when I recognize I did something wrong is profoundly and uniquely human. These insights from Maimonides helps us not lose sight of what makes us human, the ability to say that we are flawed and to admit it is not easy to confront our conscience when we understand we missed the mark. AI is not capable of the admission of flaw, of remorse, and of celebrating the success and delight of profound change.
Another way that our tradition defines the difference between humans and machines is the capacity to doubt. Belief is not central to our tradition. We may doubt everything, from the efficacy of prayer to our place in the world, even the existence of God. What connects us to our tradition, and what defines us humans, is that as Jews what we believe (or fail to) is less important than the way we act. We are supposed to study and acquire knowledge in order to act with wisdom in the world. The discussion and interpretation of texts is not an end in itself—it has to lead to action.
In a text in the Talmud (Kiddushin 40b), we read: Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were hanging out in the loft of the house of Nit’za in Lod, when this question was asked of the teachers: What is greater: study or action? Rabbi Tarfon said: Action is greater. We must be out in the world teaching, doing things and helping wherever and however we can. Rabbi Akiva disagreed. He said that study is greater, but not as an independent value; study is greater because study leads to action. Studying implies that everything can be discussed, and that we are open to change our minds and hearts. We have to keep in mind that the reason we study is not to accumulate knowledge. The reason we study is not to fill our minds with ideas and sit at home doing nothing. The reason we study is so that with the knowledge we accumulate we go and act in the world. Accumulating knowledge, as does Artificial Intelligence, is only relevant if we take this knowledge and find ways to act with Grace, Love, and Compassion in this world.
Dr. Dhruv Kullar, in a recent article in The New Yorker, wrote a beautiful piece about the uses of AI. He shared an anecdote that explains the place of study and action in the art of medicine: “On my first day of medical school, I sat in a sunlit courtyard alongside dozens of uneasy students as professors offered advice from a lectern. I remember almost nothing of what they said, but I jotted down a warning from one senior doctor: the more clinical skills you gain, the easier it gets to dismiss the skills you had before you started—your compassion, your empathy, your curiosity. AI language models will only grow more effective at interpreting and summarizing our words, but they won’t listen, in any meaningful sense, and they won’t care. A doctor I know once sneaked a beer to a terminally ill patient, to give him something he could savor in a process otherwise devoid of pleasure. It was an idea that didn’t appear in any clinical playbook, and that went beyond words—a simple, human gesture.”
In this coming year I wish for us all to use Artificial Intelligence for what it is—a tool that can help us synthesize data and improve our lives. While we can relinquish control of our sentences, allowing Artificial Intelligence to autocomplete them, the texts we send and the letters and emails we write will ultimately reflect our ability to care and to act in this world with Grace, with Love, and with Compassion. May we fully go through the process of teshuvah, understanding our mistakes, feeling remorse, and celebrating our successful changes. May we use this valuable tool to improve our humanity, and may we grow in our Emotional Intelligence, connecting deeply with others, enhancing the world with the power of our relationships.