Possible Implications of AI and a Tech Utopia on Religion

The new frontier

The prospect of humans creating AGI, that is machine intelligence that is human or above human level, went from a fantasy to something that most experts expect us to have in the next decade¹. Although it may seem far-fetched, most people that are working on the frontiers of this technology, already take it as a given that the human race will be vastly outpaced in terms of our basic utility in our lifetimes. Companies, such as figure.ai have already produced AI enabled robots with human like capabilities.

Let us assume that AGI is a real possibility, and all of the promises of the tech utopians come true. All manual labor will be done by hyper-intelligent robots at a pace not possible for humans. Everyone will have a small-scale fusion reactor in their homes, basically a smaller version of the sun, enabling everyone to have unlimited free, cheap, clean energy. Food will be abundant because we will have figured out the processes of rearranging atoms to form any type of food (already being worked on) with the exact same nutritional profile. All disease will be cured because we will have mapped everything down to the genetic level and will have the tools to manipulate RNA/DNA sequencing. Etc.….

A world such as this is considered not only possible, but inevitable by the people that are working on the cutting edges of these technologies. So let us at least entertain the idea that the world will look somewhat like this in say, the next 100 years. This seems like an incredible world to live in, but I think it will present immense challenges to the frum world and religion as a whole.

(Disclaimer: There is a theory that has been floated to me by a few people, that AGI = the messianic age, my writing reflects my rejection of that assumption.)

Halacha

At some point (very likely already), AI will not only know all of the Torah and all of Jewish Law ever written, but it will also understand Halakhic reasoning. For example, it will be able to synthesize all of Igros Moshe and then start paskening a modern-day question as if it was R’ Moshe Feinstein. It will know every single Shaila u Teshuva (Question and Answer) Sefer ever written, being able to use reasoning from all cases ever answered. Would you still go to a human Posek given his limitations?²

Limud Torah

The foundation of the frum world is the concept of learning. Much of the learning done in Yeshivos is not “practical” learning, rather it is an in-depth (B’iyun) technical analysis of the Talmud using methods honed in the Yeshivos of Europe. The basic gist of this sort of learning is coming up with new insights (Chidushim) in the Talmud using various commentators (Rishonim and Acharonim). Again, once an AI is trained on the methods of Yeshiva learning, there will be no more insights, this might sound controversial, but it is not. Imagine 100 billion guys in Brisk learning Talmud all day, every day spitting out Chidushim. That is what AI will do to Limud Torah³.

The first two concepts of Halacha and Limud Torah are pretty easy to understand and in my opinion will have to be dealt with relatively soon. The next one is much more complex, more controversial, and if it does come to be, will probably take many more years. Although, if it does occur, there will need to be a major rework of Jewish philosophy.

Determinism

Determinism, up until recently has basically only been thought of as a philosophical viewpoint. Determinism is the view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. In a nutshell, it is a stance that believes all events can be a priori known if we just had enough information about the events that preceded it. It believes that free will is an illusion of the mind, and all human actions are pre-determined, hence determinism.

Here is where AI and AGI come in. If enough data can be gathered about earthquakes or hurricanes, AI should be able to very accurately start predicting when these natural disasters would hit, maybe even days or weeks in advance. You can imagine it begins to take the “god” out of the “wrath of god” of these sorts of events. Now think of this sort of data collection and prediction capability in other fields. You begin to take the “unknowns” out of life, one by one. Once AI can start accurately modeling the world, it should ostensibly be able to make fairly accurate predictions of future events. I would imagine this to be damaging to the concepts of free will (Bechirah) and divine providence (Hashgacha).

I have some ideas about how to deal with these issues, but I would love to hear from you.

1. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI has said 3-5 years.

2. I have heard pushback that it won’t be able to answer personal questions because it does not know you personally. This is only true today, assuming AGI agents, you will have your own personal AI assistant who will know you better than yourself.

3. If you hold that Limud Torah is anyway just for its own sake (Lishma) completely, then you would not have an issue. Although, I imagine it will be considerably more boring knowing your question was already thought about a thousand times.