Q&A: Robotics and Judaism
Robotics and Judaism
Question
Dear Rabbi, hello and have a good week.
I wanted to ask the Rabbi for a few answers to several questions about robotics and Judaism:
My interest from a conference on the subject focused on digital humanity (or “digital sapiens,” as a replacement for “homo sapiens”) and artificial intelligence, and where it is taking us.
The questions I wanted to direct to the Rabbi are:
1. Can it be concluded that in the future robots could replace religious figures (such as rabbis), based on the possibility (which still exists) that programmers may indeed succeed in creating artificial intelligence that imitates people more accurately?
2. If indeed every statistical model (like a Turing machine, for example) can replace human language, understand it, and imitate it: is it really true that there is no superiority of man over beast? What distinguishes us, human beings endowed with “a speaking spirit,” from the rest of creation?
3. Would such a robot be permitted to say things that fall under the category of slanderous speech, in order to “remove worry from a person’s heart”?
4. Can the Rabbi point to additional halakhic / of Jewish law questions that could arise from releasing robots onto the market?
5. In the Rabbi’s opinion, what is the reason humanity is seeking at all to create a perfect robot that imitates a human being? What is the ultimate aspiration of modern man?
Thank you very much, and have a good rest of the week.
Answer
Hello.
These are weighty questions, and it is hard to elaborate on them here. So I will write briefly.
First, I suggest you read my post here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9E%D7%94%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%92%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9C-%D7%93/
As for your questions,
1. Possibly. I cannot know. I definitely think they will not become human beings (with consciousness and desires), but products of thought and judgment may certainly be possible for them.
2. A Turing machine has not the slightest connection to statistics or statistical models. As I said, it seems to me that even if there were a robot that could think like a human being, it would be mechanical action without consciousness or will. Even today the computer can perform many “human” actions, and therefore in my assessment the expected difference is only quantitative.
3. There are no prohibitions on robots, and robots have no worries in their hearts.
4. There could be many, of many kinds. But these are questions of types that are already familiar to us today. In my view, these are sophisticated machines and nothing more.
5. There is an obvious scientific and technological interest in this. I do not see value in searching for hidden motives behind scientific and technological research and discoveries. If that is what you are aiming at, then of course there are some who are motivated to show that there is no superiority of man and that there is no spirit and no free choice, but there are also many others who are not.
Regarding robots’ obligation in commandments, see the short (and amusing) story published in Nature a few months ago about a robotic Torah scribe:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7647/pdf/543752a.pdf?origin=ppub