Thirty rabbis gathered in Lakewood this week to confront the gravest threat to Judaism since the invention of the printing press: Artificial Intelligence.
They did not convene to ask whether AI could cure disease, decode ancient manuscripts, or help parnassah-starved families make an honest living. No. They came to save us from the unsupervised thoughts of machines—and, accidentally, from the supervised thoughts of human beings.
The meeting was urgent. A long table, folding chairs, stale rugelach, and a fear thicker than the steam rising from the urn. The agenda was simple: AI is dangerous. Why? Because it answers questions. Because it remembers sources. Because it doesn’t ask permission. And worst of all—it doesn’t know who the gedolim are.
One rabbi opened with a trembling voice: “In our day, Torah was acquired through mesorah. From rebbi to talmid. Today, a bochur asks a box with wires.” Heads nodded gravely.
No one asked why the same bochur already carries a smartphone, uses Google Maps, orders cholent on an app, and checks the stock market before Shacharis. Technology is fine—until it starts thinking.
Another rav warned that AI can generate divrei Torah in seconds. “What took the Maharsha years,” he thundered, “now takes fifteen seconds and a prompt.” A gasp filled the room. A tragedy. A shanda. Torah without sweat. Torah without hunger. Torah without a landlord banging on the door.
But let’s pause here. Judaism survived the alphabet. It survived paper. It survived the Rambam systematizing the entire Torah in one book. It survived Rashi explaining everything so clearly that even a ten-year-old could learn Chumash. It survived the printing press, which the rabbis of its time also declared dangerous. It even survived Artscroll—barely.
Yet now, suddenly, this is the line? The Almighty, who gave human beings the capacity to reason, invent, calculate, and create—He’s alarmed that a computer can summarize Tosafos?
One rav stood up and said the quiet part out loud: “If people can ask AI questions, they won’t ask us.” Silence. Truth has a way of clearing its throat in the room.
This wasn’t about theology. It wasn’t about emunah. It wasn’t even about halacha. It was about control.
Because AI doesn’t tell you, “That question is inappropriate.”
AI doesn’t say, “You’re not holding there yet.”
AI doesn’t shame you for asking why half the community lives in poverty while leaders fly on private jets to asifos about poverty.
AI answers the question.
And that is intolerable.
Someone warned that AI could expose contradictions between sources. Another fretted that it could show historical context—how certain chumros developed, how politics shaped psak, how power calcified into dogma. One rabbi nearly fainted at the thought of a teenager discovering that “this is how it’s always been” is often historically false.
They spoke about bitul Torah. They did not speak about bitul zman created by a system that keeps men learning without skills, without income, without dignity—while their wives shoulder the burden and their children inherit the anxiety.
They spoke about modesty filters. They did not speak about intellectual honesty filters.
They spoke about protecting the masses. They did not speak about protecting truth.
Outside the room, the world keeps moving. Doctors use AI to detect cancer earlier. Engineers use it to prevent disasters. Historians use it to preserve memory. Even poskim quietly use it—don’t kid yourself. Someone in that room already asked it a question. Probably about Rashi. Probably late at night. Probably with a browser set to incognito.
Here’s the unorthodox truth: AI is not the danger. Fear is.
Fear of losing monopoly. Fear of questions that don’t stop where they’re
told. Fear that Judaism, when stripped of coercion and insulation, will
demand something harder than obedience—integrity.
Torah has nothing to fear from knowledge. If it does, then something else is being defended in its name.
Thirty rabbis met in Lakewood to warn about Artificial Intelligence. What they should fear is artificial authority—authority propped up by banning questions instead of answering them, by silencing curiosity instead of guiding it, by mistaking gatekeeping for greatness.
The Gemara survived worse than a chatbot.
The question is: will the gatekeepers?
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| REPUBLISHED |
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rabbis-meet-in-lakewood-to-discuss-the-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence/
5 comments:
There are genuine concerns here that are dismissed far too quickly.
AI lies. It's called hallucinations but if AI is asked a question and doesn't know the answer, it will make one up. If it needs a reference to support itself, it will also make that up. AI can be the equivalent of a highly intelligent compulsive liar prepared to invent facts to support his position.
I've been to a shiur where the rav demonstrated how he asked shailos from AI and the answers were wrong but they had "references" to support them so someone who didn't know better would never have known to question them.
Then there's the role of mesorah. As my rebbe, z"l, once said: Chazal weren't stupid. They could've made a rule book like the Shulchan Aruch that was easy to read and understand. The whole point of making the Talmud complicated was to force the student to go to a rebbe who had himself gone to a rebbe and so on to ensure there wa a connection between generations when it came to the transfer of information. This was the one legitimate criticism against Rav Steinsaltz, zt"l, when he wrote his Talmud commentary. No longer was a rebbe needed. Just read what he wrote.
Finally there's the threat to intelligence. It's convenient to have an endless reference manual in your phone but how much brain power have we lost because we no longer memorize essential things, relying instead on an app to remind us? At least now we remember there's a formula or statement we have to look up. With AI, it will do that thinking for us too and the consequences will be terrible.
Internet panic part two --- What about the idiot rabbi who tells you don't get your kids vaccinated!
Rav Moshe Weinberger has a great line: Every generation has its internet. Thing is, there really is a danger. Watching TV dumbs people down. Having hte internet do all your work for you dumbs people down. Having AI think for you really dumbs people down. This isn't just a frum concerns, it's a societal concern in general. For the first time in history, coming generations will be less intelligent and accomplished than the previous ones.
As always throughout our history, the smartest of us accept the challenges and get smarter and do great things, and the dumber do get dumber, by their own choices.
Paul, do you think gedolim let’s say 80-90 years ago would’ve proclaimed a public fast day against gas chambers or against the Nazis who operated them? AI is just a tool, not the cause of anything. According to their logic, should we have davenned during the holocaust about the dangers of zyklon b, starvation, mass extermination by shootings, etc or against the Nazis who were the cause of all these modes of mass murder?
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