[Avodah] AI in the Bet Medrash

[Micha Berger]

Over Shabbos, I read R Dr Moshe Koppel's essay
    https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/politics-current-affairs/2024/03/what-artificial-intelligence-has-in-store-for-judaism/
I thini he is focusing more on sociology than hakakhah, on how he expects
people will lemaaseh adapt more than a discussion of how thing out to go.

but as a talmid chakham who runs an AI lab, he brings a good framework
for our discussion.

   Mosaic Magazine
   What Artificial Intelligence Has In Store for Judaism

   AI has the potential to change the way Jews study Torah, observe Jewish
   law, work with rabbis, and teach their children. Will Jews resist those
   changes or welcome them?

   Moshe Koppel is a member of the department of computer science at
   Bar-Ilan University and ...

   The industrial revolution brought freedom and prosperity to millions in
   the 19th century, while also presenting considerable challenges to
   millions more, perhaps especially to religious communities in general
   and to Judaism in particular. Opportunities for migration and
   urbanization, the diminution of communal interdependence, exposure to
   alien ideas and the breakdown of religious authority--all threatened
   the very survival of those communities in novel ways that demanded
   novel responses. Looking back, it would hardly be an exaggeration to
   say that it has taken centuries for Judaism to adapt.
...
   The coming information revolution, of which artificial intelligence
   (AI) is the most notable and best-known example, will no doubt offer
   great benefits, but will present even more serious challenges than the
   industrial revolution. As I will explain in a moment, these challenges
   include threats to human safety generally and to religious communities
   specifically. But, at the risk of sounding parochial in the spirit of
   Hugh Nissenson's short story "The Elephant and My Jewish Problem" or
   the satirical headline "World Ends: Minorities and Women Hardest Hit,"
   I will mostly keep my focus here on how traditional Judaism might be
   forced to grapple with the challenges and opportunities presented by
   AI.

   I will make two main points. First, drawing on work being done in my
   own AI lab in Israel, I will show how AI can provide tools that benefit
   Judaism by making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible. Second, I
   will suggest ways in which Judaism might, in return, offer models for
   purposeful and meaningful living, even as ubiquitous AI threatens to
   attenuate some of our deepest social and moral attachments.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 A pious Jew is not one who worries about his fellow
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   man's soul and his own stomach; a pious Jew worries
Author: Widen Your Tent      about his own soul and his fellow man's stomach.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                     - Rav Yisrael Salanter