WHAT IS THE TORAH PERSPECTIVE ON AI?

A rabbi was once asked by a congregant, "Rabbi, why do you always tell a joke before your sermons?" The rabbi replied, "Because if I can make you laugh, then I know I can make you think."

Now, listen to my genius the AI: Here are AI words, not mine:

This week's parsha, Eikev, is all about crossing over - from the physical to the spiritual, from the mundane to the holy.

It is a new world. Artificial intelligence solutions are already embedded in industries from healthcare to supply-chain management, to investing. As the field develops, experts predict we will see significant changes in everyday life. In an essay, Sam Altman wrote as follows:

“In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand our concept of ‘everything.’

“The technological progress we make in the next 100 years will be far larger than all we’ve made since we first controlled fire and invented the wheel. We have already built AI systems that can learn and do useful things. They are still primitive, but the trendlines are clear.”

Amazing or what? Yes, AI will be running stores and supermarkets; you will call them if you want pizza, and they will create the pizza, and deliver it to your home, and you don’t even have to tip them.

And if you need someone to drive your motorboat, he will do it. He will also be running the bowling alley and taking care of your taxes.

What is the Torah’s perspective on AI? If work in the traditional sense will be obsolete in our children's or grandchildren’s lives, is that a positive outcome?

The Baal Shem Tov famously taught that a person must learn a practical lesson in their spiritual lives from anything they hear or see. Every development in history, education, and science can be mined for meaning. When something becomes impossible to ignore, when it becomes part of the fabric of society, that means there is something profound to extract from there.

The Rebbe always taught that the world was a canvas of Divine meaning. From the moon landing to computers to laser technology to the game of chess, he explained their moral and spiritual meanings and lessons. What can the incredible intelligence and creativity of machines teach us about ourselves and our relationship with G-d?

So, the truth is, I should have asked AI this question and presented his answer. But I did not. Instead, I recalled a talk by the Rebbe on, Parshat Eikev,

The Rebbe posed a question on a powerful verse in our portion.

Moses continues his closing address to the Jewish people, preparing them for their grand entry into the land of Israel. He recounts the history that they were all familiar with. How G-d fed them in the barren desert, how He clothed them and cared for their every need. Then Moses paints a picture of the future.

Moses worries that all the success and wealth they will encounter in the New Land may lead to a dangerous outcome. Perhaps, Moses says, you will “eat and be sated, and build good houses and dwell in them, and all that you have will increase... and you will forget your G- d, Who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage..."

 “You must remember G-d your G-d, for it is He who gives you strength to create power, to establish His covenant which, He swore to your forefathers.”

Now, I can imagine giving this warning to Wall Street investors, Silicon Valley founders, or Hedge Fund managers who think they run the world. Don’t let your success get to your head, stay grounded.

But, Moses is talking to one of the most unique generations in Jewish history. The parents among them were children or teens at the time of the Exodus. The children were born in the desert. They were sustained by daily miracles. And they had front-row seats to all the miracles and the tragic mistakes of the past forty years. Many of them saw the Exodus, the parting of the Sea, and the revelation at Sinai; they saw or heard about the sin of the spies and internalized its message. They all ate the daily manna. They were thoroughly educated in what it means to trust in G-d. They were ready to enter the land of Israel and they were not afraid. This was the generation G-d was waiting for!

Did they need to be lectured about forgetting G-d?

There must be a thread of legitimacy in this thought.

We believe that G-d is not “jealous” of man’s creativity; to the contrary, He wants human beings to exercise power. The rabbinic account of how G-d taught Adam and Eve the secret of making fire is the precise opposite of the story of Prometheus.

“And G-d blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on its G-d rested from all His work that God created to do.”

The sages in the Midrash ask, what kind of expression is this? “To do.” It should have said, “That G-d created and had done!” But “created to do,” means there is more to do.

 “This teaches us that everything that God created in the first six days needs further actions, for example, mustard seeds need sweetening, peas need sweetening, wheat needs grinding, and even humans need fixing.”

G-d cedes control, as it were, of creation, and hands the reins over to us. There is unfinished business, things that have yet to be revealed, and entrusted to us to carry out.

Judaism sees us as “partners of G-d,” working together as partners running a business to repair ourselves and the world.

A child is a paradox of sorts. On the one hand, nothing is the children alone. Everything the child has, he or she has from their parents. There is not a single strand of DNA, a stray gene, that the child has contributed to itself. It is the copy of both parents. And yet, somehow, something new emerges in the child. As the child grows, the parents look on with delight as they realize that there is something unique here. Yes, there is some of me and some of my spouse, but there is something in my child that is hers or his alone. Talents, ideas, habits, creativity, wisdom, sensitivity, refinement, honesty, candidness, courage, emotions, soulfulness, depth, dignity, and mannerisms that you almost don’t recognize, make you wonder, “Where did that come from?”

The Talmud teaches us: “Sometimes the power of the son is greater than the power of the father.”

So much for the legal dimension. The Chassidic masters read this law through a mystical lens and with deep psychological awareness. Sometimes, the child exposes and reveals something latent within the parent but never expressed.

The power of the child is greater than the power of the parent because the child can accomplish something that only ever existed in potential form in the parent.

You have hidden talents and wisdom in you that may remain dormant, but your children will actualize them and bring them to the fore.

What Chassidut revealed hundreds of years ago is now scientifically documented in the field of epigenetics.

Our life experiences affect our genes, and they may come out in the lives of our children, grandchildren, or descendants decades, even centuries later. It is why today some of our children are dealing with stuff that they inherited from us or our parents and grandparents.

Why is it this way in biology? Like everything in science, it begins in the spiritual realm. We are G-d’s children. And sometimes, there is a certain Divine energy that is concealed in the world, a truth that cannot be revealed, a light that is constricted. Even G-d Himself does not reveal it. Our “parent” struggles to actualize this potential. And we, G-d’s children, can reveal that light that remains dormant and unconscious!

And so G-d declares: “My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me.” They have created something that I did not create.

I am in Heaven. But they have carved out truth in and from Earth. I am light, but they have carved truth out of darkness and trauma. I am infinite, but they have carved holiness out of the finite.

So, we are not just G-d’s partners, working together, we are His children. We are not just given opportunities to create alongside G-d, we are, sometimes, able to invent, create, and introduce entirely new worlds to G-d’s creation. Worlds and advancements that are inconceivable when imagining the raw materials of the world after G-d’s creation.

The Midrash relates an incredible story:  

Rabbi Akiva told a Roman interlocutor who asked him, “Which works are more beautiful? Those of G-d or those of the human being?

Rabbi Akiva said: Those of flesh and blood are more beautiful! Bring me wheat and bread. The wheat is the work of G-d, and the bread is the work of flesh and blood. Is the bread not more beautiful?”

The Talmud states: The work of the tzaddikim is greater than the work of creation!

The greatest gift you can give your children is the conviction that they can become creators. When your child or student is struggling with a difficult task, maybe something difficult for you, too, you can lift them and show them what is possible.

Every parent wants to see their child create a better world for themselves. There is no envy in raising children. We all want our children to outpace us, to leave behind our restraints, to break through what we couldn’t break through.

We want to encourage our children to become “greater than the power of the parent,” and encourage them to explore, to create, to build and destroy, and to fail. Because G-d made us in this way: we are only fulfilled when we express our need to build and create, to imitate G-d, to partner with Him, to be His child that discovers new light in places where G-d never revealed it, because it seems it is beyond Divinity; yet the child who enters a world of darkness, can bring light even there!

Isaac Asimov, considered the greatest writer of science fiction, once recalled an incident involving his mother.

My mother, who came from Russia, decided to go to night school and learn how to write English. One of the teachers finally asked her, ‘Pardon me, Mrs. Asimov, are you by any chance a relation of the brilliant Isaac Asimov?’”

“My mother, who was four feet, ten inches tall, drew herself up to her full height and said, proudly, ‘Yes. He is my dear son.’”

“‘Aha,’ said the teacher, ‘no wonder you’re such a good writer.’”
“‘I beg your pardon,' said my mother, freezingly. ‘No wonder he’s such a good writer.’”

Yes, Isaac Asimov was a much more powerful, talented, and creative writer than his mother was. But I beg your pardon, where do you think he got the spark from? Out of thin air, from a genie in a bottle?

Of course, from his Russian, Jewish mother.

This does not discount the child’s achievements. They are, indeed, more powerful than their parents. But every advancement is rooted in the parent.

In our times, as science continues to grow from day to day and reveals more and more, G-d sent us the most potent illustration to explain to us this paradox, this balancing act of recognizing that creativity can be greater than, but come from, the parent.

This entire paradox—at the core of Judaism—is perfectly reflected in the phenomena of artificial intelligence.

Imagine you’re a scientist who needs to discover a new antibiotic to fight off a scary disease. How would you go about finding it?

Typically, you’d have to test lots and lots of different molecules in the lab until you find one that has the necessary bacteria-killing properties. It’s a very long, very expensive, and probably very aggravating process. It can take 45 years, and 5,000 researchers, with billions of dollars.

But what if, instead, you could just type into your computer the properties you’re looking for and have your computer design the perfect molecule for you?

This technology will replace so much human effort and toil because of how much better it will be than we are at intellectual, data-driven tasks.

It can compress and analyze incomparably more information than we can. It can beat human beings at the most complex games we have devised. The child is simply more powerful than the parent. He has outgrown us very fast and very far!

But where does this clever robot come from? It did not generate spontaneously out of some galaxy. It was designed by human minds. It thinks like a human being. All the information and data that it knows, is knowledge that humans have discovered and fed it.

 It just can think like a bizarrely fast human, without error without experiencing exhaustion, and without needing compliments, a raise, and a promotion. It is not even trying to win the Nobel Prize!

Its strength comes from the father. It has nothing of its own, its knowledge is our knowledge, and its creativity mirrors our creativity. It is deeply familiar because it is us. Just infinitely more powerful than us.

So, what can AI teach us about ourselves and our relationship with truth, with G-d? It serves as a parable that reveals to us how G-d wants us to be infinitely creative—and yet our creativity is not our own. Just as the brilliance of AI is beyond our abilities, but it is born of human intelligence, so, too, humanity may outstrip its parent, it may do what G-d never has done, but everything we have comes from G-d. Because we are one.

When Rambam writes about the Messianic Era, he describes it like this.

In that era, there will be neither famine nor war, envy, or competition for good will flow in abundance and all the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know G-d.

This is the world we are all building. And when we do, when we insist on holding nothing back and searching for ways to bring the light of G-d and the light of goodness, love, and Torah, to new places, revealing the light of Torah creating and building a world aligned with G-d’s vision, then at the moment of redemption, G-d will smile and say, “My children have triumphed over Me” They brought redemption to a world where it seemed so difficult and challenging. They have surpassed Me!

And in that world, the paradox will be no paradox. Our infinite creativity and our dependence on G-d because we will see that we were always ONE.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky