In its current incarnation, the technology is not wholly reliable, conjuring up sources that may sound authentic but are actually inaccurate, he warned. But more than that, it poses a threat to the very process by which learning develops, tempting students to take short cuts by seeking ready-to-hand responses rather than painstakingly working out the meaning themselves. “Though it scans the whole web and puts together what you need in a quick and easily digestible form, to do that it cuts corners.”
Jewish education is not simply about the accumulation of information but the cultivation of wisdom, which looks to apply learning to life, he argued. It “is not just about what we teach but who we teach and how we teach”, he said. “When two Jews learn, or learn with a teacher, in the background is always the question: ‘How are we going to live this?’ It is a very different thing.”
We are meant to be ameilim baTorah, “deeply involved”, in Torah, he explained (quoting Rashi) – which is about trying to grasp the reasoning behind a particular position rather than just asking a question and receiving a simple answer.
Resources such as ChatGPT may appear suitably encyclopaedic but they can induce us away from the hard graft necessary to make knowledge stick.
Alluding to Rabbi Chananiah’s saying, Rabbi Zarum said, “There is no Shechinah on that screen.”
Clearly, there is a difference between having a friendly librarian around who can suggest something to read and getting someone else to do your reading for you.
Rabbi Dr Harris Bor makes the case for AI[Missing Credit]
For Rabbi Dr Harris Bor, author of Staying Human: A Jewish Theology for the Age of Artificial Intelligence, devices like AI are tools – as is a knife. “A knife is very dangerous but it can also help you chop the carrots – it depends on how it is being used,” he said.
Presenting a more favourable view of the new aid, he averred: “AI will not do everything for us, but it will help you become better at everything that you are and everything that you do.” Including being a better Torah scholar. It can help focus questions or suggest other commentaries to consult.
The technology was just in its infancy, he argued, but would be improved and refined. Either we embrace the new or we “remain locked in the past and fall behind”.
Innovations often bring fears in their wake. Rabbi Bor recalled that the decision to begin writing down the Oral Law (in the form of the Talmud) was controversial at the time, Rabbi Chiya bar Abba even saying in the name of Rabbi Jonathan that anyone who put laws down in writing “are like those who burn the Torah and anyone who studies from them receives no reward”.
Two millennia later, it would be unthinkable to imagine doing without books. Digitisation has changed the game further by placing vastly more sources at our fingertips that were previously within reach. And online translations can help those not versed in the original language at least partly to enter a text.
Whether ChatGPT is seen as no more insidious than a calculator that helps us save time or proves a dubious tutor, teaching us to skate over information that we would have taken trouble to digest, hangs in the balance.
But Rabbi Bor did give an impressive demonstration of its capability when he “examined” the machine in evidence. “I can offer prompts and encourage reflection,” it replied in voice mode, appearing the epitome of common sense. “But cultivating wisdom is a joint effort, it depends how learners engage, question and apply what they discover.”
Asked if it were trying to replace chavruta, it responded: “I see myself as a complement, not a replacement. Chavruta is irreplaceable in its dialogue and debate, I can offer a starting point or extra context but real understanding thrives in conversation with others.”
On this occasion, it enjoyed the benefit of the doubt, with the audience voting to acquit the programme of any wrongdoing by 57 to 47.
Rabbi Bor observed that in Jewish tradition human beings were given the power to create. Whereas in Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the heavens, in talmudic lore fire was a divinely bestowed gift.
And as we know, depending on how it is used, fire can burn or warm.
