Brian Teeman, Co-Founder of Joomla! and OpenSourceMatters, knows a thing or two about tech. Here he discusses what uses AI might have for Judaism, and whether it’s ready to replace the rabbi just yet!
In the face of groundbreaking technological progress, many of us are questioning the ways which AI might be of use in all aspects of our life. The rise of artificial intelligence has ignited conversations regarding its potential influence on many new areas, even including religion.
Brian Teeman, the founder of website building platform Joomla, was recently asked to speak on how AI might be used in Judaism at a Chagigah event for Jews in the North. We caught up with him to explore his thoughts on the subject: “To put a Jewish spin on AI, one of the things that
I did as a demonstration at a conference recently was that I asked AI: ‘Can you tell me about the Shema?’ It came back and told me that it’s the central prayer of Judaism, the words mean this, this, and this… and started describing it. And that was very good, so I asked it to tell me the same thing in a way that’s suitable for five-year-olds. And it gave me a really nice story explaining exactly the same thing. Then I asked it to do it again, but for teenagers, and it chose another style and way of saying it.”
Despite this, Brian says we don’t have to worry about AI replacing rabbis just yet:
“Right now there’s no aspect of empathy.”
“There are two different types of limitation. The first is trust. How do you know that what it is saying is correct. If you ask it a question about a thing that you personally know about, you can verify yourself. But if you were to say: ‘Is the following food item kosher,’ can you trust it? If you went to a rabbi and asked, you would 100% trust their answer. Or, if the rabbi didn’t know, you would go and ask a different rabbi. AI systems won’t do that. The AI system will confidently tell you, it is or it isn’t, but potentially incorrectly.
“The other limitation is that right now there’s no aspect of empathy. If you were to say: ‘I’m having trouble with my relationship, what should I do?’ It can give you advice but it isn’t empathising with you, and it isn’t personalising it. If the rabbi knows you he is able to empathise and customise his answer for you specifically.
AI systems can only work on their existing knowledges, which is twofold: the content and the style of writing it.”
Despite these limitations, Brian does see some use for AI in Judaism in the future: “I can definitely see how it can be used in teaching, especially with the example I used earlier of explaining things in different styles for different audiences, especially children. In terms of adult learning, it can access more sources than you probably can yourself, and it can do so much more quickly. You might have a few books on a subject, but AI can access thousands of books!”