AI and Thou

With Artificial Intelligence leaders calling for caution and self-scrutiny, the work of Jewish spiritual luminary, Martin Buber provides insight. Buber wrote I and Thou to describe the spirituality in the back-and-forth between people. So, when it comes to writing to a computer in place of talking to a person, my colleague, Rabbi Tom Alpert, asked “What would Buber make of AI and Thou?” Of course, Buber would strongly object to speculating on what he or anyone else would say. Nevertheless, why not?

I and Thou presented the I-Thou encounter as the wholehearted words, gestures, and glances in interpersonal communication. A soulful aura accompanies candid, respectful, and mutual give-and-take of I-Thou. In fact, I-Thou is a portal to the spirit.

From one perspective, there are pluses and minuses to AI, as with any other innovation, going back to the invention of the wheel.  On the positive side, thanks to the wheel people and cargo move faster and more efficiently. On the negative, consider the cost to personal safety and the environment: Buckle up when driving, look both ways when crossing, and, alas, breathe the air. Mixed reviews of innovation came with the wheel.

This is not to suggest that we roll back the clock – or the wheel. To be sure, the Hebrew Bible encourages innovation through the call to “master” the earth. (Genesis 1.28), making progress a religious obligation. On the other hand, Buber told of Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Rymanov, who, confronted by innovation, longed for simpler times. Rabbi Menahem Mendel taught:

In the days when there were no roads, a person had to end a journey at sunset and spend a night at an inn, where there was plenty of time to meditate, read a book or have a good conversation.  But now a person can ride these roads day and night and there is no peace anymore. (Tales of the Hasidim: Later Masters, Olga Marx, trans., 134)

Rabbi Menahem Mendel cherished an evening devoted to thinking, learning, or face-to-face conversation, spiritual opportunities that, with the lure of roads, got sidelined to the shoulder. The “road,” like other “time saving” advances, for all the benefits, leaves a soul short on discretionary time. What is more, Buber recognized the possibility that our creations can harm us.

Buber lived through an unprecedented era of progress in communication, transportation, health care and more. This progress came in tandem World Wars I and II, and the devastation wrought by advances in war technology, including machine guns, explosives, aerial combat, radar, and nuclear and chemical weapons. Buber offered a cautionary lesson from the legend of Rabbi Judah Loew of 16th century Prague and his imagined creation of the superhuman Golem.

To protect the Jewish community from ongoing antisemitic violence, Rabbi Loew sculpted a Golem from clay and brought the inanimate figure life by placing a piece of paper inscribed with God name under its tongue. The Golem safeguarded the people if the Rabbi removed the paper from the Golem’s mouth at the beginning of Jewish Sabbath. However, one Sabbath the Rabbi left the paper there, and the Golem went on a destructive rampage. Buber, responding to the legend of the positive-negative, dual-effect of the protector-destroyer Golem, drew a parallel to an advancing humanity that was being helped and harmed its own creations. Pointing to the devastation of World War I, Buber wrote the Prague Jewish community, “Friends, it is not yet Sabbath. We must first remove the Holy Name from under the Golem’s tongue.” Today, too, there remains time to reach into the mouth of the soulless creation so that we “master” the Golem before it masters us. It started with the wheel and got worse with roads, Then, came the car, followed by the Information Highway, and there are days when it feels as if “there is no peace anymore.”

I only understand a fraction of what AI can do. But I can say we do well to be mindful of the negative consequences of every advance. “AI and Thou,” is a call to step off the highway when it is necessary to remove God’s holy name from under the Golem’s tongue and prevent the damage that flows from unmonitored creativity. Now we can ask whether AI advances or impairs access to interpersonal-spiritual possibilities?

Someone with a family problem replaces a psychotherapist with AI. A teen turns from friends to a screen and keyboard. How do you compare an exchange with AI and an exchange with a person?

The response to this question is in the name: “Artificial.” The back-and-forth with a computer, albeit a large one, merely simulates a conversation with a person. Thus, by definition, it can only mimic. It cannot be the same.