December 25, 2022|א' טבת ה' אלפים תשפ"ג AI Torah vs. Human Torah By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

The holiday of Chanuka is a time for celebration and joy. It commemorates the miraculous victory of the Maccabees over their oppressors and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. During the eight nights of Chanuka, we celebrate by lighting the menorah, singing songs, and sharing special foods with our loved ones. But beyond the celebrations, Chanuka also serves as a reminder of the power of faith and determination. The Maccabees were able to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and emerge victorious because they held firm to their beliefs and never lost hope. This Chanuka, let us remember the bravery and determination of the Maccabees and be inspired to keep fighting for what we believe in, no matter how difficult the journey may be. May the light of the menorah bring us hope and joy during this holiday season, and may we always remember the powerful message of Chanuka. Amen.

And this, my friends, is the response I received when I typed in the AI ChatGPT website “write a sermon about Chanukah.” As some of us know, GPT in ChatGPT’s name stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. What GPT does is that it analyzes a text based on a user’s input by searching a massive amount of written text by reading millions of articles and books and then producing an article that answers the question. This is the new frontier of artificial intelligence and, for one, it presents a challenge to educators. Will students need to do research on a topic anymore? Can they simply go online, type in a question, and presto, a perfectly-typed research paper will appear?

I’m not interested in that particular question today. The question that I’d like to address today is what is the difference between a dvar torah from artificial intelligence, from GPT, or from a human being, like me or you? What is the future of human divrei torah if we have AI divrei torah? Maybe we can turn the holiday of Chanuka to guide us in exploring this question. After all, it’s all about the power to dream.

A story is told about a woman who awoke excitedly on her birthday and announced enthusiastically to her husband, "I just dreamt that you gave me a pearl necklace for my birthday! What do you think it means?" With certainty in his voice, the man said, "You'll know tonight." That evening, the man came home with a small package and handed it to his wife. With anxious anticipation the woman quickly opened the package to find a book entitled, "The Meaning of Dreams." It’s all about the power to dream.

Chanuka always falls out on or around Parshat Miketz and the story of Yosef. Rabbi Beryl Wein once connected the story of Chanuka with the story of Yosef by asserting that Mattityahu actually followed in the footsteps of Yosef.

Yosef interprets Pharaoh’s dream in an accurate, truthful and prophetic, but basically critical and unflattering fashion. He tells Pharaoh that there will be a horrid famine and that the Egyptian authorities are unprepared for it. Pharaoh had many advisors who attempted to interpret his dreams and some told him that there would be disaster. Daughters will die, provinces will rebel, but it would not be because of him. It was his fate and he could not alter this fate. However, Yosef dares to tell the unpleasant truth, the politically incorrect but accurate interpretation of the dreams which requires Pharaoh to act now, to store food now, in order to save his kingdom.

The Chashmonaim, led by Mattityahu, followed in Yosef’s footsteps. Not only did they fight the Syrian Greeks, but they taught the Jewish people about the Jewish dream, the unpleasant, politically incorrect truth. They told their people that you cannot have a Judaism without a Shabbat or any Jewish ritual. Even though the Greeks tell us that we must concede to observing pagan rituals because the Greeks have a mighty army and even though Hellenism seems like a superior, more cultured option and we cannot fight against the tide, we must dream of a better tomorrow.

In short, then, both Parshat Miketz and Chanuka tells us the meaning of dreams. Dreams do not simply tell the reality. Dreams reflect on the reality of past events and they challenge us to transcend that reality in the future. Freud posited that the motivation of dream content is wish fulfillment.

I asked my artificial intelligence bot, “Can you dream?” And the response that I received is that “as an artificial intelligence, I do not have the ability to dream in the same way that humans do. I do not have subjective experiences or consciousness, and I do not have the capacity for feelings or emotions. I am simply a program that has been designed to process and analyze language and provide responses based on the information that have been trained on. I do not have the ability to have personal experiences or thoughts beyond what has been programmed into me.”

What is the difference between me and you and AI? Yes, AI can share divrei torah, but each one of us can also dream. Chanuka tells us not just to observe mitzvot because we are commanded to do so. Chanuka celebrates our commitment to Torah as dreamers who believe that we can transcend ourselves and do what is seemingly impossible.

As a Torah observant Jew, am I allowed to view Ukrainian President Valdimir Zelenskyy, who addressed the US Congress this past week in Washington, as a “modern day Maccabee?” On the one hand, of course not. He is an assimilated Jew, the type of Jew that Yehuda Ha-Maccabee probably fought against almost 2200 years ago. However, in some sense, he stands for the value of dreaming, of not caving into the reality that all of us thought eleven months ago that Ukraine would quickly fall to the Russians. He dared to dream. There is something very Yehuda Ha-Maccabee, very Chanuka-like, about this behavior, even from this assimilated Jew.

There is a profound difference when a computer shares Torah or when you or I share Torah. When you or I share Torah, it’s “ner ish u-baito.” What is “ner ish u-baito?” Now that’s a fascinating formulation. The basic mitzvah of kindling Chanukah lights is “ner ish u-baito,” or a light for a person and his household. If the basic mitzvah of Chanuka lights is that we simply need one light per house, the Gemara could have simply said, “ner la-bayit,” or one light per house. But the Gemara tells us that the basic mitzva is “ner ish u’baito,” and the reason, says Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, is that the true miracle of Chanuka is one word that is found in the “al ha-nissim” prayer. We praise God for the miracles, for the battles that we won, “bimei Matityahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol Chashmonai” – in the days of Matityahu the son of Yochanan the high priest – “u’vanav” – and his children. That is the miracle of Chanuka, says Rabbi Lau – “u’vanav,” that not only were we able to withstand the pressures from the Greeks, but our children were also motivated to follow suit. Because the enemy didn’t want to kill us. They simply wanted to us to stop observing Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh and to stop the barbaric practice of brit milah. And our commitment to our ideals was successfully transmitted to our children. It was ner ish – our Chanuka light, and it was also u’baito – it was a light that we transmitted to our homes. And the way we did that was that we had dreams. We rejected the seeming reality that we had to assimilate into our outside culture. We dreamed of something different. And our children were inspired by our dreams and they dreamed alongside of us. This is “ner ish u’baito.” This is the result of us spreading the light to our families and to those under our sphere of influence. This is something that a computer alone cannot do.

My bracha to each and every one of you is that you will be a Chanuka Jew and follow in the footsteps of Yosef, of Matityahu, and never stop dreaming, share your commitment to your ideals not like an AI bot, but with passion, commitment and with your dreams so that your bayit, your home, will shine more brightly than ever.