In 1990, my father had a decision to make. He was going to venture into a new industry and had to decide which one made the most sense for him. Based on his interests, he had two options: he could become a mechanic or a barber. Both were intriguing to his sensibilities. Ultimately, he opted for the hair industry because he believed it to be more resilient to economic circumstances. When money is tight, people might not invest in their cars as enthusiastically, but hair grows no matter what is going on. And thus began a career that would involve him owning his own salon, becoming a traveling educator in the beauty and barber industry, and three Guinness World Records for the fastest haircutting experiences in history.
Three decades later, my father and I would revisit this decision, albeit from a different perspective. With the growing innovations in technology and artificial intelligence, we discussed the industries that would be most devastated by computers infringing on human productivity. We agreed that he and I were likely to be some of the last people to be pushed out of our work by a computer because we each worked in such deeply human areas. There is something intimate and physical about getting a haircut that makes it unlikely that anyone would let a robot do that work (especially during the timeframe of my father’s career). I can’t imagine a robot performing a wedding or funeral with any of the emotional care and gravitas that a rabbi brings. It would seem, at least for the time being, that our careers were safe.
But recently, there have been many conversations about aggregation software. It is becoming a growing problem that AI interfaces can consume huge quantities of information, whether in the form of movies, books, paintings, sermons, or any other form of content and then synthesize that data into a new product, a “creation” that is inspired by the previous work but does not inherently rip off the original. This is wreaking havoc on how we interpret copyright law; most rules governing how we interact with this material are perilously outdated. It is as easy to pirate music or movies today as it was in the early 2000s, and the creators of the content seem entirely outmatched by the sheer power of the technologies used to steal from the original artists.
This got me thinking: one of religion’s most interesting and confounding elements is asking ancient texts to speak to modern realities. How do we, as Jews, ask the Torah to guide our way of life when a 3,000 year old text is almost entirely unaware of so many of the basic facets of our lives? We ask religious tradition to guide how we interact with financial systems that would boggle the minds of our ancestors or weapons that are simply incomprehensible to the historic texts. What would happen if we ran all of the Jewish wisdom we’ve collected over the years, from Torah to Mishnah, from Maimonides to Rashi to Spinoza to Sacks, through an AI software? Would we then be able to ask ChatGPT a question about our modern world and let every single voice in Jewish history fight it out in a technological battle for supremacy?
In theory, this would be a compelling way to navigate the ambiguity of our world and would feel like a simple way to figure out “What Judaism says” about any given situation. But to do this would be to fundamentally misunderstand the Jewish value of engaging in meaningful questions in the first place. Because much more than we are looking for any single answer about how we should engage with questions of morality and practice, our historical propensity for looking to our texts to guide us is instead about training our minds to evaluate the world around us and to make sound decisions of which we can be proud. Judaism is, and always has been, far more about process than product and is far more concerned with how we decide our daily activities than the actual answer itself.
This is not to say that Judaism should be afraid of or dismissive of technological innovations. The pursuit of more complex wisdom is a fundamental Jewish value. In the book of Proverbs, we read, “Instruct a wise man, and he will grow wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will gain in learning.” (Proverbs 8:9). Our technological innovations have made it possible to access an even wider swath of the Jewish library than we could have ever imagined, and there is no such thing as bad learning. Yet Judaism is a vital reminder to constantly prioritize the human experience, centering our ability to thrive, learn, and grow. If Artificial Intelligence can help us grow in our capacity to process information, then that is a profound gift. But if AI renders us unnecessary in the process and instead replaces the human element for making sense of life, then it isn’t making our experience better, it is removing us from ourselves.
It is difficult to imagine what the future holds for many industries. Technology is moving faster than we can imagine, and our need to adapt has to grow accordingly. But Judaism offers us the helpful reminder that at every moment along the way, we must insist that technology serve us rather than us becoming subservient to it. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should, and it has always been our Jewish tradition’s sacred gift that we are reminded of the larger context in which we can use our tools to make a meaningful lived experience for each of us as we navigate into an unknown future.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
