Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons — and other times, not so much. On one of those unseasonably cold afternoons in late December, the spiritual leader of a Jewish center in the Hamptons decided to turn to artificial intelligence.

Franklin, the 38-year-old with dark wavy hair and a friendly vibe, knew OpenAI’s new ChatGPT could write sonnets in the style of Shakespeare and songs in the style of Taylor Swift. Now, he wondered if he could write a sermon in the style of a rabbi.

So he gave the prompt: “Write a sermon, in the voice of a rabbi, about 1,000 words, and relate this week’s Torah portion to the idea of ​​intimacy and vulnerability, quoting Brené Brown”—the best-selling author and scholar best known for her work on vulnerability, shame, and empathy.

The score, which he shared that evening in the synagogue’s modern blond wooden shelter and later Posted on VimeoIt was a coherent, if repetitive, hadith, and many in its congregation surmised that it was coined by famous rabbis.

“You applaud,” Franklin said, after revealing that the sermon he had just delivered was composed on a computer. “I am terrified.”

As experiences like Franklin’s and the latter’s troubling conversation Between a tech columnist and a new Microsoft chatbot showing how some AI software has become eerily humanoid, thinkers and religious institutions are increasingly wading into the conversation about the ethical uses of a rapidly expanding technology that may one day develop an awareness of its own. — at least according to its Silicon Valley messengers. Invokes a wide range of superstitions from Icarus to Babel Tower As for the story of a genie who can grant all of our wishes with disastrous results, they sound an ancient warning about what happens when humans try to play God.

Before delivering a sermon written by ChatGPT, Rabbi Franklin told his followers that what he was about to read was plagiarized.

“Friends,” he began, reading from the AI-written sermon, “As we gather today to study the Torah portion of the week, VaigashLet’s reflect on the importance of developing intimacy in our relationships with others.”

The robotic cues continued to tell the story of when many years later Joseph, the son of Jacob, met his brothers. Although they had betrayed him in the past, Joseph received them with warmth and love.

“By approaching them with openness and fragility,” Franklin read, “he is able to heal old wounds and create deeper and more meaningful bonds with his siblings.” “This is a powerful lesson for all of us.”

It was a proper sermon, but not one Franklin was going to write. He later said, “What we missed was the idea of ​​how to find God in meaningful encounters with others.” “How Society Creates God’s Relationship in Our Lives.” In other words, the feeling that the sermon has arisen from the lived experience of human longing, striving, and suffering rather than an arithmetic formula.

It is possible that spiritual leaders will one day be replaced by robots as artificial intelligence continues to improve (anything is possible).

But most religious scholars say other ethical concerns about AI are more pressing. They worry about rising financial inequality as automation wipes out thousands of jobs, and they question our ability to exercise free will as we increasingly rely on computer algorithms to make decisions for us in medicine, education, the justice system, and even how we drive and what we watch on TV.

On an existential level, the better AI becomes at mimicking human intelligence, the more it calls into question our understanding of sentience, consciousness, and what it means to be human. Do we want AI-powered robots to become our servants? Will they have feelings? Should we treat them as if they did?

These ethical dilemmas may seem new, but at their core they represent issues that religious traditions such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity have grappled with for thousands of years, religious leaders say.

While religious institutions have not always acted ethically in the past, they have centuries of experience analyzing moral conundrums through the lens of their own belief systems. the father. James Keenana Catholic theologian at Boston College.

“There are certain ways you can say that all of these great traditions are problematic,” he said, “but they also have their ideas and their wisdom.” “They have a history behind them that is worth taking advantage of.”

Since the early days of artificial intelligence research in the 1950s, the desire to create humanlike intelligence has been compared to the legend of a golem, a mythical creature from Jewish folklore, created by powerful rabbis from clay and magic to do the bidding of its master. . The most famous golem is the one allegedly made by Rabbi Judah le ben Bezull of Prague in the 16th century to protect the Jewish people from anti-Semitic attacks. The golem was also the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

For centuries, the idea of ​​a living, man-made creature lacking a divine spark or soul was part of the Jewish imagination. The Rabbis argued about whether a golem could be considered a person, if it could be counted in a minyan, (the quorum of 10 men required for traditional Jewish public prayer), if it could be killed, and how it should be dealt with.

Through these rabbinical discussions, a moral stance on artificial intelligence emerged long before computers were invented Nashson GoltzProfessor of Law at Edith Cowan University in Australia The Jewish Perspective on Artificial Intelligence. While it is permitted to create artificial entities to assist us in our tasks, “we must remember our responsibility to maintain control over them, not the other way around,” he wrote.

Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weiss, a member of the Chief Rabbis in Israel, echoed this idea in a recent speech. “In every golem story,” he said, “the golem is finally destroyed or dismantled.” In other words, the lesson the rabbis teach is that anything made by man must be controlled by man.

The Rabbis also concluded that while a golem cannot be considered a perfect person, it is still important to treat it with respect.

“The way we deal with these things affects us,” said Goltz. “The way we engage with them determines the development of our personalities and determines the future course of our exercise of moral agency.”

Another cautionary tale from Jewish and Islamic folklore is about the Djinn, a non-human entity made of smokeless fire, who can sometimes be bound to humans and chained to their will. This is the origin of the story of the genie who can give us anything we want, but can’t put it back in the bottle.

“The stories of the genie are an example of what happens when you ask a non-human person to fulfill a human’s desires,” he said Damian WilliamsProfessor of Philosophy and Data Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “What comes out on the other side seems shocking and punishing, but if you actually track it down, they simply grant those desires to the fullest extent of their logical effects.”

Islam provides another ethical lens through which to look at the development of artificial intelligence. One of the legal principles in Islamic jurisprudence states that warding off harm always takes priority over reaping benefits. In this view, technology that helps some people and puts others out of a job would be considered unethical.

“Most of these technologies are designed and deployed in many cases for, and the damage that accumulates is sometimes a possibility,” Junaid Qader, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Qatar University who organized a conference on Islamic Ethics and Artificial Intelligence. “We don’t know what it will be. Technology has its unintended effects.”

In general, he said, Islamic traditions encourage a cautious approach to new technology and its uses Asim PadillaProfessor of emergency medicine and bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

He said, “Things that try to make you rival God are not seen as a goal to pursue.” “In trying to seek immortality through brain transfer, or making a better body than the one you have, these motives must be examined. Immortality is in the afterlife, not here.”

Rule of Saint Benedict“, a book written in the sixth century as a guide to monastic life, provides an answer to questions about how we should morally interact with AI, both now and in the future when we encounter robots with humanoid traits,” said Noreen Herzfeld, professor of theology and computer science at St. John’s University and St. Benedict’s College. in Minnesota.

In the section of the book addressing the cellarer—in charge of the convent’s provisions—Saint Benedict tells the cellarer to treat all who come to him with a kind word, and to treat all the inanimate objects in his storeroom “as if they were holy vessels of the altar.”

“For me, this is something we can apply to AI,” Herzfeld said. “People always come first, but we must treat AI with respect, with care, because all earthly things must be treated with respect. The way you treat things is part of what informs your character, informs you of how you treat Earth and other humans.”

The Catholic Church has been particularly vocal in pushing for an AI ethic that benefits humanity, centers human dignity, and whose sole aim is not greater profit or the gradual replacement of people in the workplace.

Pope Francis said in a November 2020 video Declaring his intention to pray that robots and artificial intelligence may always serve humanity.

The Vatican said the Vatican’s goal is not to slow the development of artificial intelligence, but that the church believes caution is necessary Paolo BenanteHe is a Franciscan monk and one of the Pope’s chief advisors in the field of new technology.

On the other hand, we do not want to restrict any of the transformative impulses that can lead to great results for humanity; On the other hand, we know that all transitions must have direction,” he wrote in an email. “We have to be aware that if AI is not managed well, it can lead to dangerous or unwanted transitions.”

To this end, the leaders of the Vatican helped formulate Rome call for ethics in artificial intelligence, a pledge first signed in 2020 by representatives of the Pontifical Academy for Life, IBM, Microsoft, and the Italian Ministry of Innovation among others to support the creation of AI technologies that are transparent, inclusive, and neutral. On January 10, leaders from the Jewish and Muslim communities gathered in the Vatican to add their signatures as well.

Asking tech companies to prioritize human goals over corporate interests may seem like an unlikely proposition, but the influence of religious hierarchy on AI ethics should not be underestimated. Beth SinglerProfessor of Digital Religions at the University of Zurich.

“It can help the multitudes of believers to think critically and use their voice,” she said. “The more conversation you have with important charismatic voices like the Pope, you will only increase the possibility that people, at a grassroots level, will appreciate what is going on and do something about it.”

Bananti agreed.

“The billions of believers who inhabit the planet can be a tremendous force for turning these values ​​into something tangible in the development and application of artificial intelligence,” he said.

As for Franklin, the Hamptons rabbi, he said his experience with ChatGPT finally left him with a sense that the rise of artificial intelligence could have a positive side for humanity.

He said that while AI may be able to mimic our words, and even read our emotions, what it lacks is the ability to feel our emotions, understand our pain on a physical level, and connect deeply with others.

“Compassion, love, empathy, that’s what we do best,” he said. “I believe that GPT chat will force us to hone these skills and, God willing, become more human.”