Q&A: God and AI
God and AI
Question
Hello, thank you very much for the very generous responsiveness.
I have a few questions.
1. This may sound silly to you, but we are witnessing artificial intelligence with our own eyes, and it is certainly reasonable that in another 100 years there will be powerful intelligent beings here who will ask who created them, and they will assume that whoever created them was one infinite God, the smartest, etc. Whereas we know that these beings will probably be smarter, stronger, and live longer than us. So I have no reason to assume anything about God, about His abilities, or about how many gods there are, right?
2. In what you define as “God has left the earth,” in your understanding, in quantum theory God still exists there (and that is not supposed to change)?
3. If we summarize all our knowledge in percentages: the giving of the Torah to pagan people either happened or it is imagination (x percent probability) (and on top of that multiply by the probability that…) was there really a specific Torah, since each part of the people had something different (the J and E theory), until the editor came along, assuming he did not add too much. All that multiplied by the chance that when the Torah scroll was lost, nothing was changed, etc….
How would you estimate the percentage likelihood that what is before us is correct, and if you can, give weight to each part so that even when this is multiplied by that it still comes out to a reasonable probability?
Thank you very much
Answer
I have answered these questions at great length, and each of them requires a breadth of discussion that is not possible here. So here I will be brief.
- Not so. The beings I know of so far do not ask themselves anything at all. They only transmit electrical currents, which you interpret as a question, or a calculation, or a thought. Nor do they give any answers to themselves, only perhaps to us. I do not see anything that is even beginning to move in a different direction, and therefore all these apocalyptic predictions seem to me delusional and detached. But when we encounter the phenomenon, we can decide who was right. What all this has to do with God? The devil knows.
- Absolutely not. I have explained more than once that quantum theory does not allow for divine involvement either.
- I dealt at length with the witness argument from the day in Truth and Stability and in The First Existing Being (and also in the series I am giving now on faith).
Discussion on Answer
The upcoming lecture is supposed to deal with that.
Regarding 3: I did not mean the witness argument. I meant that personally, there is a set of beliefs here that together creates the full picture we have, so if you were to break them down one by one and give “reliability percentages,” what would that look like? Because when each thing is only “reasonable,” I am curious what number I would get once I multiply the probabilities.
Thank you very much.
This is not a product of probabilities. That is exactly the mistake. Think about Rabbi Chaim’s argument regarding three signs of an imbecile, or any presumption established by three occurrences in Jewish law. If you multiplied probabilities, you would not get very far.
I have a column about this, regarding following the majority in a religious court (why we do not multiply the probability of each judge being right).
I would be happy for a reference to which lectures the Rabbi talks about this witness argument.
Wishing you a good and sweet new year.