[Avodah] ai psak

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 06:25:13AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Since we really don't know what goes into consciousness, it's hard to know
> whether AI will eventually be considered in that category. Thoughts?

This is the third of fourth variant of the theme you've shared
speculations about. To reply, I will necessarily overlap with things
I wrote in reply to the other variants.

If we get away from hype, it would seem obviously -- to me, at least --
that AI is not intelligent. It is a huge amount of of algebra that gives
intelligent output. There is no "I" in the center of the maelstrom. No
koach hadimyon that knows what red is like, only a system that has a
vector (like an arrow that has a length and direction) that represents
red in relation to all its other vectors.

Really, a large language model is an elaborate version of Google's
autocomplete feature - at least much closer to that than actual
intelligence.

Think of the late night dorm room conversation as to whether when you and
I see something red we both have the same experiences in our heads. Maybe
your mental experience of red is the same as my blue...

AI has no mental experience, and no "I" to experience them anyway.

It is more appropriate to call it Simulated Intelligence - a program
that gives output that looks like it was produced by intelligence.

And that is bound to yield different results than a human.

What did Moshe Rabbeinu reply to the mal'akhim who were "shocked" that
Hashem would give His Torah to human beings? (Shabbos 88b)

AI, like mal'akhim, never experienced Yetzi'as Mitzrayim, never had
parents to know what it is like to relate to them with kavod and yir'ah
or otherwise, don't assimilate ideas from social contact with other
nations... And probably unlike the mal'akhim, don't even have the ability
to experience or know what something is like altogether. As I said, no
koach hadimyon.


And I still think, as I wrote on your other AI posts, that in order
to at least simulate the kind of intelligence a poseiq is supposed to
be using, you need to not only give the AI access to halachic concepts
(e.g. using a RAG - Retrieval-Augmented Generation - method) you would
need to initially train the AI with far more teshuvos, pesaqim and codes.

Assuming the AI were used as a tool by a Rav, sod liyrei'av and siyata
diShmaya would still factor in, in the poseiq deciding what of the AI
output to use.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 We are what we repeatedly do.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Thus excellence is not an event,
Author: Widen Your Tent      but a habit.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Aristotle