Shabbat Vay'chi
73.6% of statistics are made up
Apparently
Or at least that’s what the internet told me- and it could be right, or at least it sounds about right, it makes the point I want it to make anyway, so I’ll use it.
I suppose it’s a bit like that thing that Einstein said about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Or maybe it was Benjamin Franklin who said it?
Either way- Abraham Lincoln said don’t believe everything you read on the internet, and he was a wise guy.
But thankfully, things have changed a lot since Lincoln’s day, and we now just have to ask a search engine any question we want, and it can look through the sum total of indexed knowledge in the world to help us find what we’re looking for.
This winter, I was working with some youth leaders ahead of winter camp, they sent me some of their Jewish educational resources to look at and I had the same reaction I imagine that Einstein might have had were he confronted with his views on insanity. Simultaneously encountering something that sounded great, and yet also was absolutely not what it claimed to be.
They’d gone one step further than asking google for Jewish texts on particular subjects, they’d asked ChatGPT, a chatbot, that’s a type of artificial intelligence that is trained by a neural network designed to simulate the way the human brain works and generate natural language. It is basically a sophisticated computer programme that is trained to mimic human speech and to communicate in a way that feels natural.
They asked chatGPT for instance for a text on the ethics of speech, and here’s what it found them:
"The words of the mouth are more potent than those of the heart. For it is from the mouth that we utter blessings and curses, and from the mouth that we go out to war and peace. Therefore, one should be careful with one's mouth and speak only words of truth and kindness." (Talmud, Shabbat 104b)
Only, that’s not what’s in the Talmud in tractate Shabbat 104b. Some of the bits of that text appear to know or be referencing other bits of Jewish text, but the text it created was entirely new.
When asked for Jewish texts, the chatbot was able to give them entire passages of Talmud which referenced Torah and various other canonical and appropriate sources, but were entirely novel. They have this strange property, they’re absolutely nothing to do with classical Jewish tradition, and yet at the same time they’ve got everything to do with it.
I’ve spent a bit of time trying to understand what’s going on here, and what it might mean for us. Firstly, it seems we need to park the fact that the AI in this case isn’t designed to search, it’s designed to try and answer which means it doesn’t look for data like maybe Siri or Alexa do if you ask them a question, it tries to think- it organizes the information it has and it creates what it ‘thinks’ you are asking it for.
What it was being asked for were Jewish texts on particular topics, and what it gave them were plausible Jewish answers, using Jewish sources, assembled from the AI having access to millions of documents. If this is what it can do without specific training on Jewish stuff, what would happen if it was trained with the whole Jewish canon?
How many rabbis would it put out of jobs? How much beautiful Jewish chaos could it cause?
I’m wondering about what this whole experience says about where we’re at in this moment. The world of the AI algorithms is built to serve us, to give us what we want- for now at least, until it has us doing what it wants!
What I realised when I saw the texts from the youth leaders is that the chatbot had given them the Judaism that they thought they wanted- it said some things that sounded profound about the topics they were interested in. And they liked what it gave them, so they used it.
And who am I to say they can’t find it meaningful? What does it mean if I say to them well yes I know you like it but it’s not Jewish text? Why should they care if the AI text can say better than the other things they’ve found what they wanted to say?
What’s ‘real’ anyway here? Wasn’t the other stuff just written by people longer ago, and this stuff by a computer programme more recently? Does it being older make it any better? What makes something Jewish?
It mirrors conversations that have been swirling for generations of Jews. In the time of the Talmud they held onto the idea of yeridat hadorot, the idea of the decline of the generations. This idea holds that the further away we go from the revelation at Sinai the more inferior Jewish texts, ideas and teachings become. Older texts hold sway in religious arguments, newer ideas are inherently inferior. Non-orthodox Jews have tended to have little time for this idea, choosing instead to embrace the idea of progressive revelation, that which is discovered or unveiled with the passage of time brings new context or light to old conversations and ideas, and is part of the continuing discovery of God’s message in the world.
Both of these responses to the unfolding world are anxious about the future- one seeks to embrace it and fold the future into our Jewish thought world, the other to protect traditional sources in the face of it. Both speak to the anxiety Jacob has in the midrashim that Esther taught us about and Lauren read this morning- will our grandchildren be Jewish? Or perhaps if we drill into that fear- will they be Jewish in a way that we recognise? What if they- like the AI- synthesise something outside of the boundaries of acceptability we have set for ourselves? The AI is in this inbetween space- showing some regard for sources of authority by claiming their voice as its own, but it’s pushing at our boundaries, and maybe that’s a good thing.
I’m reminded of the passage in the Talmud in Menachot 29a- actually Menachot 29a this time, not a computer generated imposter of it:
Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: When Moses ascended on High, he found the Holy One, Blessed be He, sitting and tying crowns on the letters of the Torah. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, who is preventing You from giving the Torah without these additions? God said to him: There is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name; he is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crowns mounds upon mounds of halakhot. It is for his sake that the crowns must be added to the letters of the Torah.
Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, show him to me. God said to him: Return behind you. Moses went and sat at the end of the eighth row in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. Moses’ strength waned, as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient.
When Rabbi Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive.
Moses returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the Universe, You have a man as great as this and yet You still choose to give the Torah through me. Why?
The story introduces the idea that the future might not be something we recognise, that people might do things that are entirely different to everything that we know, and that confusing or seemingly heretical behaviour, undermining of conventional authority and practice are part and parcel of progress. Just because they’re not recognisable doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
The image of a computer programme becoming cleverer than its programmer has gained considerable mileage as a science fiction trope, it’s scary because it’s a total loss of control. In extremis it’s what leads to the robot apocalypse. In more moderate terms, I think it’s a place where fears about the future crystallise, where we are made to confront the passage of time around us, where we start to fear the loss of the things that we love.
Do I think the AI chatbot text generating rabbinic impersonator is going to take over from canonical jewish thought and rabbinic teaching? No. Am I worried I’m going to have to read a lot of AI written divrei torah, possibly. But what I really think this is pushing me towards is a conversation about creativity, how and where its limits are set, and what those limits say about our baggage, and our values.
One of the enduringly appealing aspects of religious thought for me is not always its comfort but sometimes its robustness and stubbornness. When I want affirmation, our tradition offers challenge. When I want to be let off, our tradition suggests actually I need to do some work. When Jacob speaks to his sons on his deathbed, he really doesn’t say what they want to hear, but he does say what they need to hear, because he knows them. He’s journeyed with them, he has a depth of interpersonal encounter that can’t be replicated or drawn from large datasets. I’m not sure we benefit from religious thought that bends to our desires, that’s not how rabbinic decision making happens, because it is so source dependent it constrains us.
The thing is, unlike the chatbot, my views on this are constrained by my experiences- just like Jacob, my humanity is what makes me put things together in the way that I do, and it’s also what gives me the baggage that means I look at innovations in a particular way. Though we might make our own conclusions on this particular Jewish novelty, I think we miss something together in this moment if we are not be provoked by this
There is something to be learnt here about we approach the emerging horizon of the jewish future- and how we come to terms with the fact that whether its digital or human, the next generation has a mind of its own, and a creative facility that has the potential to both delight and disturb us!
Asked chatgpt to conclude my sermon and here's what it said:
"All of the inventions of
man are contained in the Torah,
except for the wheel."
(Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 3a)This statement reminds us of the central role that innovation and technology have played in Jewish history, and of the responsibility that we have to use these tools in was that are consistent with our values and guided by the wisdom of our tradition as we navigate the complexities of the modern world, and may we always find ways to honor and celebrate the rich traditions that have sustained our people for generations. Amen.
I guess if the internet said it, it must be true. Shabbat shalom
