Are You Afraid of AI?

Imagine spending twenty years mastering a profession, then watching a computer complete in seconds a task that once took you hours. It is hard to know whether to be impressed or frightened.

AI is changing the world faster than we can blink. People worry about losing their jobs. Parents wonder whether their children will bother developing creativity and ingenuity when a machine can do so much for them.

I was talking to another Rabbi this week, and he told me about a renovation he was planning. A retired architect in his community had helped with the first basic plans. He put those plans into AI and got some beautiful renderings, showing what the finished space could look like.

When he showed those images to his friend, the retired architect began to cry.

Even some of the people building this technology are calling for ways to slow or pause its development so humanity can keep up. When the people building the engine are discussing how to use the brakes, you know we might have a problem.

I would probably find this very scary if not for a teaching the Lubavitcher Rebbe explained in 1976, exactly fifty years ago this week. His explanation offers a remarkable way to understand the unbelievable times we are living in.

To appreciate it, we need to go back to how Kabbalah understands the Flood.

This week’s Torah portion describes a world overwhelmed by corruption and violence. So G-d decides to bring a flood upon the earth, which the Torah describes as a nonstop flow of water coming simultaneously from two directions.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life… all the springs of the great deep burst open, and the windows of the heavens opened up.” (Gen 7:11)

In the language of Torah, water can represent wisdom. Thus the Zohar, the foundational work of Kabbalah, reads these two openings of waters above and below, as an allusion to a future outpouring of knowledge as well. Knowledge from both above and below.

Above is the divine wisdom of Torah. Below is humanity’s knowledge of the physical world.

It identifies the six-hundredth year of the sixth millennium as the Jewish year 5600, corresponding to the secular year of 1839–1840. Look at the two revolutions that unfolded around that era.

When the Baal Shem Tov began publicly sharing the hidden, mystical teachings of Judaism in 1734, that would forever transform Jewish life. His groundbreaking teachings brought the Torah’s inner wisdom to ordinary people, teaching them to recognize G-d’s presence in everyday life, to serve Him with joy, and to appreciate the immense power of a sincere prayer.

That revolution continued through the Tanya, opening a new window into the human soul. These teachings changed how people understood themselves, and their relationship with their Creator. For the first time, even those who didn’t learn all day understood that they, too, could create a meaningful connection to G-d through prayer, through everyday work, and through helping a neighbor.

Meanwhile, another revolution was taking shape. Beginning with the first steam engine pumping water from mines in 1712, the invention of mechanized silk mills and then the flying shuttle invented in 1733, these were the catalysts that transformed weaving from a slow, manual home-craft into a high-speed, mechanized process. Now, one weaver could do the work of two people in half the time.

By 1760, the Industrial Revolution was unstoppable, as new machines transformed how people worked. In the generations that followed, steam-powered trains changed how far they could travel, where they could live, and where they could get food from. It was a revolution that changed our reality forever.

Humanity was discovering extraordinary possibilities within creation. At the same time, Jews were discovering extraordinary depths within the soul. Our understanding of both the world around us, and the world above us, had opened in ways that would change everything about human existence.

The Rebbe explained that these two revolutions were deeply connected. A greater revelation of divine wisdom brings a directly corresponding expansion of human wisdom below. And both are necessary to prepare the world for a new era, for a time when humanity will finally, and fully, recognize its Creator.

Today, that relationship has become far more powerful and evident.

Think about learning Torah. Once, going to hear a particular Rabbi you enjoyed listening to might have required a long journey. Finding an answer could mean locating a book you did not own, in a language you could not read.

Today, with the explosion of the internet and AI, you can find information on any Jewish topic within seconds, with sources, translations, and classes by teachers around the world. You can follow one explanation with another until an idea begins to resonate deep within.

You can even listen at double speed. An hour-long class now can take thirty minutes. The opportunity to acquire divine wisdom today is truly astounding. You can spend an evening moving from teacher to teacher without ever leaving your chair.

And now AI is pushing the revolution into an even more personal place. This week I started using Muse, a personal AI agent. Its ability to do hours of work in just minutes is amazing. I just spoke an idea out loud to my phone, and just like that, it made it happen.

The Industrial Revolution changed how we interacted with the resources around us. AI is making us question how we interact with ourselves. What makes me valuable? What is my intelligence for? What am I here to contribute?

If a machine can perform the tasks that once made me feel valuable in a fraction of the time, what gives my life meaning?

Those questions can be unsettling. Many are petrified, wondering if their job will still exist ten years from now.

Which brings me back to those flood waters.

From a spiritual perspective these were not waters of destruction, but waters of purification and of rebirth. The rain fell non-stop for 40 days, corresponding to the 40 se’ah measurement required to make a Mikvah (a Jewish ritual bath used by women for purification and renewal), kosher.

The Flood is understood by Chassidic teachings to be a new birth for the world. Its waters are compared to the embryonic fluids that surround a baby preparing to start its new life.

As a father of nine children, Boruch Hashem, I will never forget the time spent in the delivery room waiting for your new baby to be born. It is both a very nervous, yet very exciting, time. Will this child be healthy? A boy or girl? Easygoing or colicky? Will it be a redhead?

More importantly, what challenges will this little person face? What will their future look like?

You pray. You prepare. You feel the enormous responsibility. And through it all, you wait with excitement, so eager to meet a baby you already love so much.

That is how I feel, being blessed to live in this unbelievably fast-changing world, waiting for a Messianic future to overtake the universe.

I don’t know exactly what that future will look like, or how our lives will be then.

But I do know that our Prophets describes the era of Moshiach as a time when humanity will be free from work or stress, able to whole-heartedly pursue the knowledge of G-d. As Isaiah powerfully describes it: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9)

Understanding that the world is about to experience its greatest transformation ever could be scary. But it’s also very exciting.

So let’s do our part to help finish the birth. Let’s use the tremendous possibilities and technological advances of the Wisdom Below to learn more of the Wisdom from Above. To go deeper into your soul. To reveal G-d more in this world.

As our tools become more intelligent, let us become more purposeful. And as humanity discovers what its creations can do, may we finally discover what our Creator put our soul’s here to do.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Yankie & Chana Denburg

P.S. If you want to learn more of the Kabbalistic teachings on how G-d created the world, and how we can understand our purpose and our divine power, join us this coming Tuesday for a brand-new Kabbalah series on the Architecture of Your Soul

Go to www.mychabadcenter.org/jli to discover the full power of you.