Can’t ‘AI’ Me Love

Photo credit: Melanie/ “Perfect Hardboiled Eggs.” https://www.garnishandglaze.com/perfect-hard-boiled-eggs-every-time/

For the next couple of days, we are hyper-focused on distancing ourselves from anger and dislike and encouraging unity. Anger, to me, evokes novels strewn with shattered vases, miserable marriages, and punched-in walls. As Mussar literature posits, anger can only be used for the bad. Contrary to what we may think, this trait is not related to zealousness or respect and has no redeeming factors.

Chazal write that כל הכועס כאילו עובד עבודה זרה. One who gets angry is likened to one who worships idols. Many people ask why? I ask how. The answer to why is straightforward: they’re both destructive and wrong. But how? What is the סמיכות פרשיות here? How does one relate to the other?

In understanding this comparison, it’s worth taking a look at The Serenity Prayer. Addicts Anonymous meetings begin with a verbal acceptance of one’s struggles. Although the Twelve-Step program to sobriety is not religious by nature, it is centered on the philosophy of submitting oneself to a larger force and recognizing that a person isn’t in control of a particular nature or situation.

Part of healing and gaining self control is giving up what we think we can control and giving it over to Gd. (I’ve noticed people like hanging the fridge magnet that says, Let Go and Let Gd.) Whether we call him Gd Almighty or a Higher Force or the Universe (if that term is somehow more defining), a person who believes in a Reigning Being releases his anger at himself and at others for things that are beyond his own decisions and sphere of influence.

Breaking down the facade of controlling our lives and giving the real control up to Gd, this is an extraordinary path to healing and discipline. That is, we are being realistic in what we can and cannot control, thereby eliminating unnecessary frustration and allowing us to achieve the achievable.

Individuals without belief are bereft of self-containment like individuals on the brink of a temper tantrum. Again, a person who does not know how to submit himself before a Higher Being, including someone who believes in polytheism or worships only concepts and ideas, is like a person who has no sense in destroying others and their property in the face of rage.

Besides the issurim of anger, grudges, and revenge, as the Torah writes לא תקום ולא תטור, we are under a strong prohibition of hate, in the words לא תשנא את אחיך בלבבך.  Hatred can’t be sold or pricetagged, so it’s free, chinam—or in other words, Sinas Chinam, hatred for no reason. Sinas chinam has no real logic or value. Sometimes we feel like we can’t relate because hate is a strong word. We don’t need to hate though. Any kind of dislike that leads to begrudging behavior is also wrong. With this nuance, I’d like to point out two ideas:

Firstly, just as every chessed doesn’t need to have fireworks and every mitzvah a spark of magic, you don’t need a flame or intensity of passion to transgress. Sometimes just a good feeling is enough to fulfill a mitzvah, and a bad thought or feeling is enough to violate a lav. Often we think in extremes and have a difficult time with the nuances of gray. So in this line of thinking, if we dislike to a level of avoidance, that’s enough to transgress the issur of לא תשנא.

Secondly, let’s take a look at two infinitives in the Hebrew language: לשבור lishbor (for a lack of vowels) and לשבר lishabeir. Both are forms of breaking. But the Hebrew language is so beautifully nuanced and representative of life that it contains words that are very similar, with the same root, to connote two different types of breaking: לשבור is a light kind of breaking like breaking a phone or an egg beater. לשבר is a more severe breaking like shattering a crystal glass or destroying a wall with one’s fist.

So, breaking is to shattering as dislike is to hatred. (Don’t we all just love the SATs?) They’re both on a continuum. So to dislike is just a minor form of hate but is still a form of hate and can lead to something worse if left unchecked. That’s why we have a prohibition of bearing a grudge, because it can turn dislike into something far more grotesque as it festers over time.

In the period leading up to Tisha B’av, we are taught to drop our strong dislikes of one another and our sinas chinam. Sometimes we have to replace it with an uninterested apathy if we’re having realistic expectations of ourselves. And sometimes we should expect more of ourselves and go out of our way to show like or love. Obviously, love is always the better alternative.

An irreplaceable human experience, love is untouchable. For better or for worse, the Modern Era has seen all kinds of ways and inventions in replacing human function. We’ve created prosthetics with smooth joint movement and artificial skin. We have organ transplants and stem cell research to regrow parts of the body, grafts and feeding tubes as well as ventilators. We even have more aesthetic replacements like eye color contact lenses.

I’d go as far as to say, society even has the establishment, or illness, of pornography as it is intended to replace the pleasure of human touch and connection. Airbrushed and staged, it’s not even real and people still can’t help but go for more. In these fortunate and unfortunate ways, science and the arts have the means to take the place of many things we have or can have as human beings, as products of Gd and modems of interpersonal connection.

Take Gemini, for instance. It’s a form of AI that replaces human research or—nebach—several Google searches in getting a comprehensive answer to your question. Needing Gemini over a regular search-engine search is like throwing away autocorrect and saying, Well, I want something that autocorrects my whole paragraph instead of the annoying, cumbersome word for word. We’ve become great inventors while also becoming lazy and intolerant of activities that take little time and attention. The Gemini software replicates man’s in-depth search—albeit with technological help—with the press of a button. (Parenthetically, the expression “with the press of a button” is not so prevalent anymore, maybe one can even say it’s outdated, since the inception of touch screen and voice activation renders it dinosaur-like.)

In this way, we have methods of reducing human processes as well as objects to try and replace them. Take Alexa or Siri. Siri—a more appealing name to the frum community I think since she sounds like my friend or neighbor down the block Chaya Sarah, Suri, Sara—is only a click or holler away. A monotonous but excellent conversationalist and a fast responder, Siri is just like your annoying friend with a photographic memory, who spews facts to your face so quickly you don’t even know what hit you.

With a steely, matter-of-fact tone, she can tell you random, significantly unuseful trivia, like the date Apollo 12 landed on the moon (“1969”) and why it had minor damages (“it was twice struck by lightning”), or the highest grossing film in the 1990s, its premiere date and box office amount (“The Titanic, 1997, 2.264 billion dollars”)—and throw in a side note along with it like, “Star Wars and Jurassic Park came in second and third.”

Beyond her factual duties, Siri’s been asked for her hand in marriage many times. As an imageless bot who is intended to replace human inquiry and conversation to a certain extent, Siri avoids the question altogether with an It depends how you look at it, or I’m not quite sure I got that. Can you say that again? Imagine a woman responding that way to a man kneeling down on one knee.

All jokes aside, though, it is important for us to embrace all the benefits of modern society while rejecting all the fake replicas of human connection. Embracing replications is like buying a cheap reproduction of Picasso, putting it in a gold frame and waving it frantically in the air for everyone to see. (“Hey! I got Starry Night, everybody!”) It’s almost laughable. Why would anyone replace the beauty of human bonding with an inferior copy, when one can get the “real deal” with a little more effort, whether it’s research, conversation, or other interactions?

In this light, we must utilize the good of medical science and throw away the bad of other institutions! On top of that, we must rid our hearts of any unnecessary anguish and embrace each other in the one thing that a software program—or any other Amalek of our days—cannot take away from us, and that is our Jewish spirit and our capacity to love.

So despite its ability to take the stead of brain functions and organs, AI cannot embody the human need to need, to live and enjoy life. In our times of advanced technology and wanting apps to hold our hand (Pulse Tracker) and brush our teeth (they should have something like that), we must remember that there are certain things that a sophisticated algorithm can no more than mimic. With the despondency of our present, we need each other more than ever. Let’s embrace that need and embrace each other.

More than Alexa’s weather forecast, we need the sunniness of our sister’s smile and the rainy gloom in sharing each other’s pain. We must also delete some apps from our lives and replace them with their original prototype, asking Zeidy for advice or going to our parents for cooking hacks and facts. After all they are the ones who knew these things first before all those bots came along.

Additionally: Let us throw away our Roombas and involve our kids in meaningful acts of kibbud eim. Let us dispose of our foot massagers and electronic chairs and have our families replace them. (Electronic not electric, to note!)

Instead of connecting to all our Bluetooths, let’s connect to our people and go the extra mile to say hello. Halacha interestingly states that if a person avoids another by going on a separate path just so that he doesn’t have to say hello, that is technically the definition of a grudge and is prohibited.

So the next time you pull into your driveway and your neighbor’s out with her kids, bother chatting it up with her for a minute before rushing inside. Your groceries certainly won’t melt and time won’t run out because of it. Maybe it’ll be the small, un-fireworks-likesacrifices, day after day, person by person, that’ll bring down our Third Temple.

Contrary to popular belief and general mishigasin, we don’t need to run after Segulos or special Kvittel lists for the things that we want or need—whether it’s shidduchim, good health, or parnassah. Mitzvos are just fine. Aren’t they honestly enough if we care to keep them? There are so many blessings promised throughout Torah and the Nevi’im for those who keep Hashem’s ways! I think, though, that we all, on some level, genuinely underestimate our mitzvah observance. Let us engage in more charity and loving kindness than we are currently doing, and we will see many yeshuos to follow.

May this be our last day we sit on the floor, sprinkle ashes on our head and tear kriah! No more mourning, Klal Yisrael!