Rabbi Daniel Nevins
In this four-session course, we will consider four revolutionary new technologies and put them in conversation with halakhic concepts, texts and norms:
C) Autonomous Machines and Moral Agency
Each session we will examine primary texts from Talmud, Medieval Codes, and Modern Responsa, considering what norms are most compelling and useful in addressing the moral and religious challenges posed by these new technologies.
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This is Toren technology ancient wisdom for digital age this is and with Rabbi Daniel nans this class is continuation of a session given in Fall 2024 in this course we will consider revolutionary new technologies and put them in conversation with h Concepts texts and Norm topics including lab meet
And rot autonomous machines and moral agency uh artificial intelligence and the redefinition of personhood each session we will examine primary texts from talmud medieval codes to Modern responsa considering what Norms are most compelling and useful in addressing the moral and religious challenges posed by these new technologies this is a I believe if
Correct me if I’m wrong Rabbi nans this is this class is a bit of a preview of your upcoming book which will hopefully be published this year and if you’re joining us on Zoom thank you we’re glad to have you here um if you’re please feel welcome to turn on
Your camera we want to see you it makes for nice bit M rash atmosphere if you can and whe if we can see you if we can’t if you’re on Zoom if you’re on Facebook if you’re a panelist or an attendee please feel welcome to ask
Questions we do want to hear what you want to say don’t hesitate to either ask in chat or if you’re panelist unmute yourself and sing out like this class if you if we don’t ask question questions are there for the asking um in with that um I do want to
Hand the mic over to so to speak to rine Evans even as a small even with as small of a class as it is which seems to unfortunately be the trend but you know what we’re I I’m looking forward to learning something I hope everyone who’s on here hope is
Looking forward to learning something I hope the people out there in the on Facebook who are tuning in you know doing out and I hope you learn something and with that floor is yours thank you Kayla erto Shana and anyone else who’s out there on the live
Stream um yes thank you for that introduction indeed uh I do have a new book that’s coming out um actually I just very excited I just got the um with a fading uh anyway I just got my first proof copy um in the mail and so once we
Finish the final uh sort of formatting editing stuff that happens we’ll uh release it to the world uh in March so I’m looking forward to that um so uh Kayla in your introduction you said this is a continuation from the fall of 2024 which is interesting because I haven’t
Gotten to time travel yet that’s not my um pardon me I got that’s your I transposed something 2023 I wish I know we put a close on 23 but um yeah we we did start this series in in the fall but unfortunately we launched it the first
Week of the war between Israel and Kamas and um didn’t really feel like it was the right time for that conversation um but tonight we are continuing this is the third session and even though it’s I don’t see many people here we are recording it and so I’ll I’ll teach it
The way I would teach in front of a larger group um so the book that I wrote is called Torah and Technology circuit cells in the sacred path it’s looking at halakic um perspectives on sort of cuttingedge Technologies of our time artificial intelligence and autonomous machines uh genetic engineering lab
Grown meat which we studied last week um and many other things triage e um and uh use of technology for prayer uh and many other things so tonight we’ll look at the AI and autonomous machines um AI itself of course is everywhere but um it’s when AI gets
Paired with machines that are able to function in the world that some of the most um dramatic challenges occur after all Hala does have something to do with the inner World um of our minds as ramb begins in you know Judaism does care about what we think especially emotions like y
Reverence and AA and love or or commitment enthusiasm um and certainly also the Torah tries to create a setting where we don’t have negative emotions like um L the 10th The Ten Commandments don’t envy because perhaps that’s the hardest of them all uh you can perhaps do the other
Actions go through the motions but to actually purge yourself of Envy is one of the hardest things and so um and so when uh we talk about we’re normally speaking about actions in the world and so with AI too we’re interested not only in is a computer capable of analyzing a
Fluid situation but is it also capable of acting in the world now um I’m using the word autonomous and I’m using it carefully in differentiation from two other words you you’ll use fairly often automatic and automated and um you could say that there isn’t such a difference
Between them but I’m going to give you a definitional um approach that differentiates between each of those um automatic is a machine that can function within certain parameters um automatically and there’s really nothing complicated about it so for in instance the thermostat a regular thermostat in a
House is programmed that when it’s set to 72 if the house gets colder than 72 it turns on the heat it completes a circuit to turn on the heat uh or if it’s in air conditioning mode if it gets above 72 it’ll be set to turn on the air conditioning there’s nothing complicated
About that it’s just a threshold that gets met and once it’s met then the action ensues it’s automatic automated um is refers to a complicated type of device that perhaps is aware of more than one variable so for example it might say that well we’ve got a complicated schedule that during the
Weekday when the people in this house leave in the morning and come back in the evening the temperature can drop below 72 it can drop below 62 and the heating will not be turned on um until a half an hour before the people return and at which point the heat will be
Turned on and this way it’s combining both an atmospheric scan like what’s going on in the house and also a sense of schedule and other parameters so we call that an automated autonomous refers not to just such simple actions but a machine that is more goal
Oriented so I um excuse me going Ste for a second yeah I managed to mute so I’m very pleased about that um and um thank you shashana um so an autonomous machine is goal oriented so I use uh Google Maps for my orientation sometimes uh ways to get to work and so
I set it to take me from Manhattan to West Orange New Jersey where my school is and um it be it is checking traffic data and making determinations based on several factors what will be the fastest route what will be the cheapest roote what will be the most um fuel efficient
Roote also what patterns are there that might indicate that once I set it on the route it might change in the next few minutes so it’s actually a rather sophisticated system and in that way it’s autonomous and so when you pair um artificial intelligence with that um
Type of ability it begins to act in the world of course it’s not driving my car anyway I don’t have an autonomous vehicle um but it does assist in the in the process and at some point will of course be able to drive without assist without my assistance and in that case
It will be fully autonomous now even though we’re speaking about autonomous vehicles here the truth is that machines that are autonomous function in many other circumstances there is autopilot and airplanes and the autopilot and airplane would um has a lot of ability to to change the route to adjust the
Banking of the plane uh its altitude and velocity and all those things um and sometimes those machines um obviously fail in the case of those um the Boeing uh 737 Max flights but in general um an autopilot system is more like an automated than a um a truly autonomous
System and it does not take into consideration any moral considerations um it’s been designed to prevent the plane from banking too steeply to the or diving or climbing too fast because these things might cause people to pass out but it doesn’t know anything about that it just has been um constrained by
Its algorithms from making those moves but what about a machine that actually was capable of moral reasoning where you could say U not just get me home but perhaps set a different goal like fight against Crime let’s say or prevent um theft um and that was actually going to
Then take actions in the world and what if you were to say that this machine could control physical features of the World perhaps opening and closing locks or turning lights on and off or or calling for help or could it be even an autonomous weapon system that’s called
AWS autonomous weapon system and right now in the world um over 90 countries have developed autonomous weapon systems or purchased them some of the leaders are of course the United States and China um but also Israel and so this is to get your interest but it’s also to
Freak you out a little bit but Israel currently has deployed quite a few autonomous weapon systems I’ll I’ll mention a few of them um one is called the trophy system it’s mounted on armored vehicles like their America VA tank and it’s designed to respond to an incoming munition like a rocket
Propelled grenade and so you could imagine if you’re in a tank and someone behind you shoots an RPG at you you won’t be able to respond fast enough and what are you going to do actually you try to turn you’re not going to get away from that that munition so the trophy
System is designed to respond immediately by shooting back at the munition as it’s inbound and exploding by it in order to detonate the munition before it hits the tank and therefore save the tank and its crew um so I think most people would say oh that’s great that’s that’s a wonderful thing it’s
Like um I don’t know automatic brakes you know that are designed to to to activate if I’m about to collide with another car it’s just a machine protecting me from another another machine from an RPG um but then there are other systems which are a little bit
More on the offense Israel has a system called Harpy which is a um a type of drone that um loiters in the sky above an enemy combatant let’s say over Gaza and Kamas and sear searches for certain targets like radar displays and it’s um it’s called set and forget it sort of it
Goes off and does its thing and it does not need to check back with a human Commander before engaging that Target and shooting at let’s say the radar display and um or radar array and so you might say about that one well okay I think I’m okay with that too after all
It’s it’s a machine attacking a machine and um sure there there might be people near the radar but um it is a combat situation and so perhaps this is for the best um there are other systems that are um drones that are designed to go into buildings and to map out the buildings
And go around corners and search for humans and signs of humans and create a visual map which is then used by soldiers before they go into that building and again you might say well there’s nothing lethal there it’s just data Gathering and I’m okay with that um
But then there are other systems there’s one called guardium ium at the end um which is a armed um little vehicle small vehicle that Israel uses that can Patrol areas like out the perimeter outside of Gaza which can engage targets including humans and um and fire at them and and
Kill them and I don’t I’ve not heard any reports of actual lethal um firing by the guardian system but it’s possible you know it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on at the ground and then if that were not enough there’s a few more systems there’s one which was
Reported this summer Before the War Began um which is code named habis the the gospel which is the Hebrew word for the gospel like the Christian Bible and um it’s an automated targeting system it was designed to help Israel in a time of Total War where it being attacked by
Many countries many directions at once and that would overwhelm human analysts and so this system is meant to be able to look at all the data coming in too much for a human to be able to absorb and then to identify targets it can then be partnered with another AI system
Which is called fir Factory which can then do an inventory of assets um such as drones or fighter jets that are in the sky and what Munitions they have on them and then to pair them so that the system could identify targets to strike um now I’m raising all these things because um
Because there’s a way for these systems to be set as fully autonomous where the um the AI analyzes the environment um determines whether targets meet the criteria and then engages them um and then there are others where there’s and so there’s no human in the loop the
Human is called out of the loop or um or perhaps next to the loop uh it may be a system where um like the Iron Dome for instance where which identifies incoming missiles and then there are humans stationed there and they might be able to um interrupt the system from
Attacking saying no no that’s not an incoming missile that’s an Israeli drone or something like that an override that would make it semi-autonomous so in um in military circles this whole Loop that I’m referring to goes by an acronym called UDA o o d a UDA stands for four words observe
Orient decide act observe Orient act sorry decide act UDA so if you could imagine for a moment that you’re a Sentry standing guard outside of a base and you’re looking at the road and the area in front of the base and you’re calm because you don’t see anything but
Now you see a car approach so all of a sudden you Orient towards that car and you say oh does that vehicle have any markers that it belongs to the base do I recognize the driver what’s going on with this situation and you’re looking closely and if the vehicle starts to act
In a way that’s concerning it’s perhaps accelerating towards your post um and it doesn’t have any reassuring markings then you have to make a decision what do I do do I call for help do I hold up my hand and say stop do I sh shoot a
Warning shot do I shoot at the driver and then the final step is acting so a fully autonomous weapon system would do all four of those things it would observe Orient um decide and act whereas a semi autonomous system would um pause before acting and ask for human authorization before using deadly force
Against a human and so um one of the things I want you to be thinking about is what do you think Judaism might have to say about a machine that takes a deadly decision a lethal decision without human input what do we think about machines acting as our agents um
And so with that I’m going to turn to some texts and um hopefully Le sh Shana we got your attention there and Kayla too and here we go um right but just to kind of jump on your initial question maybe because it’s where doomi is my first thought is yeah um something that
Does damage without a human something that is not a human who causes damage well then what of the four models can we fit it in like good right so um in par Mish team last week we learned about the Goring Ox we learned about the pit and
We um learned about the fire right and so these are some of the archetypes of um that I use at the getting above a when we’re learning about nikin about the these kinds of damage and um indeed that is one of the things we’ll be looking at so let’s Jump Right In um
Although I’m this I only chose some of the text so this is um this is actually going in a slightly different direction to Bia so in the paper that I wrote the chu I wrote for the committee on Jewish law standards which is the first chapter
Of my book um I sort of use a few different holic lens one is which is agency can you appoint someone to be your agent can you use an animal to be your agent can you use uh a courtyard feature of of um your house to be your
Agent and um and uh the thing comes to a um so if I want to claim something I’m I’m walking in Rim in the Public Square and um I come AC cross an object which seems to be ownerless it’s heare it doesn’t have any markings on it it’s
Just a $20 bill lying there right there’s no one doesn’t say it’s Kayla’s $20 bill doesn’t say it’s sh’s $20 bill it’s just a $20 bill that’s lying there and so I walk up to it and I pick it up and when I do that I claim it as my own
Someone else can try to take it from me but they’ll have to prove that it was really theirs um first um well k um Can can a that claim be made also by um an animal let’s say um or could it be made by a courtyard so for instance if a
Man is serving a bill of divorce to a woman normally he would have to hand it to her but he could also throw it at her feet and if it falls within four cubits of her then um it would be considered like he served her her bill of divorce
What about if she’s in a courtyard um in her home and he sort of like knocks on the gate and throws it into the courtyard um does that count um so these are examples of ways that agency could be extended to a nonhuman agent um now in general and I’m sort of skipping
Ahead of a lot of material here but in general we say that a person’s agent is like them Adam Koto is the expression so if I um if Kayla you’re going to Israel to visit your friends adisha over there and um I say hey Kayla would you do me a
Favor give Sedaka for me and I give you that $20 bill and you say sure I’ll do that for you so you’re a shv you’re you’re taking this object for me and when you give that sadaka in Israel it’s as if my hand is actually giving the Sedaka because you are my
Agento you also get reward for this you get the you were after all a person who carried it and allowed the Mitzvah to be accomplished but Kayla imagine that I didn’t do such a nice thing I did something a little less nice okay so I said hey Kayla um you know shashana
Lives down the block and um there’s a nice bicycle in her garage and would you mind go getting that bike for me and um I’m sure she won’t miss it it and um so you go to shas’s house you go into her garage and you take her bike out and and
You’re bringing it to me when the police show up because shash saw it happening called the police on you and Kayla the police say do you um stop thief and you say no no I’m not a thief you don’t understand I’m just the messenger you
Know um Danny’s a thief he’s the one who told me to steal it right and um how would that go over with the police um um I think they call that abiding or well the police have their own separate um I guess def for the
Person in which case I think I would be as the person found with Shan’s bike in her hands I’d be I guess the of of the theft and then maybe you would be a a h shna she said conspiracy to commit the offense I’m not actually I’m not
Actually a lawyer but either way one of us is the primary um driver one of us is going to get a side charge and it’s not going to go it’s not going to go well right oh she watches a lot La order good so um yeah I mean it’s not going to go
Well for you Caleb because just doing a favor for a friend is not actually an excuse but why not if we sayam Koto um my my guard my agent is exactly like me then why doesn’t it work so the rabbis put a limit on agency and it says a sh
The a um you there is no Agency for sin um for a transgression so you kayb were supposed to know remember your Ten Commandments when it said l no and you were supposed to remember God told me not to steal things and just because Rabbi nans said you know go steal um who
Who are you who’s your allegiance to is it to me or is it to God right and hopefully the correct answer is to God right yes okay so as the rabbis say um the rabbi uh speaks and the student speaks to whom are you going to listen and so
Um in this case God is the the Rob and so um so but then that raises a problem if I say Kaya that you shouldn’t have stolen all right and so now you are liable for paying not that only for the bike should sh’s bike but there’s this
Idea in Judaism we learned last week in the par again of Cel um if you steal Shana’s bike let’s say her bike was worth $100 you have to actually give her $200 you have to kind of make yourself the victim of the the same crime that um
You tried to make her the victim of right so you pay what you were have taken from her so it’s a class of penalty um so you might say oh okay so Danny tricked me into stealing shas’s bike I did it and now I’m paying a double penalty well what
Happens if Kayla you are not um just a free person but you are actually a slave or a child things get interesting then because then it’s I’m not since I wouldn’t since I’m not quite a full H human then I have a diminished responsibility that may not preclude all
Responsibility right but it might mean that since I’m not a full person and maybe I don’t have funds I can’t pay a knas who’s the responsible person for me do they pay the knas right so you’re a full person but you don’t have full ownership of
Property and so therefore how do you pay a canos you don’t actually have your own assets and I hate to say it but hierarchically in traditional literature same is also true for a married woman because when she gets married whatever property she brings into the marriage um
Her husband becomes the manager of that property she doesn’t have access to it so a married woman who steals on behalf of her husband could have a self-defense well I can’t pay that fine you’ll have to go after him right so this is Raising all these complicated issues which we’ll
Get to back to autonomous so I’m going to read now in Hebrew or in the Aramaic as it were when we said that there’s no agent for for transgression that was only when the agent was themsel um a a liable and obligated person okay so a child who not
Bar Mitzvah is not obligated so they can’t they can’t be told oh three-year-old old kid you should have known better they didn’t know better and they weren’t responsible right and that’s also true for the evid but when we talk about a courtyard which is taking possession of an object which was
Not actually heare but was uh belonged to someone the the courtyard is not itself uh Bar Mitzvah it’s not commanded it’s not responsible it’s just a thing a place and therefore the person who um who orchestrated the action is m is going to be responsible so therefore a man who says
To his wife or to his servant and again this is offensive I I get it but this is part of the ancient world we’re dealing with here he says to them go steal something for me since they are not liable for the for the penalty does that also mean that the one
Who sent them to do this crime is liable you could say well actually it’s different because the the man and the woman sorry the woman and the servant are indeed responsible not to steal but they just don’t have the to pay because like I said before they
Don’t control their own assets to and we actually have a mission of the teaches is n because in fact if their status were to change if the woman were to be divorced or the servant were to be manumitted to be freed from servitude then they would become responsible to pay because now they
Would control their own assets so the reason I thought that this was interesting for our case is that um a machine does not seem to be Bara it doesn’t seem to be liable for its own actions and so therefore perhaps he would say that a non-human agent can
Never um surely be morally or religiously responsible um there’s a second explanation from a different um Amora ra samaar when we said this thing about them not being um respons ible for for the sins um that was only in a case where the agent had Free Will um to either say yes
I agree with this Mission uh your mission should you accept it you know they say no I don’t accept it Kayla says sorry ran Evans if you want sh’s bike you’re GNA have to go get it yourself right so if Kayla is a free person she
Can say that and so if she says fine I’ll I’ll do you a favor then she’s responsible but if um if sh if Kaya doesn’t have that ability if she’s my servant or something then um she’s not responsible but the the courtyard which has no will it this object is placed in
It and it sits there without its consent therefore the one who sent it is liable and so we’re talking here about again an object that get enters into a courtyard the gate is closed and um and the courtyard isn’t is you can’t use the courtyard as an excuse for um I didn’t
Really steal your goat my Courtyard did you can’t say that because the courtyard either in rina’s analysis or of sama’s analysis is not a moral actor so the question question is going to be well what about an autonomous machine which is actually a lot more skilled than a
Courtyard you know at some point do you get to enough presence of Mind as it were that it does become liable uh andbody have a question before I proceed to the next slide okay um here we’re going to look at the laws of Shabbat um there was a uh a question asked
Ofab the k isab caret um caret who um was a great Rabbi in the land of Israel during the mandatory period um in what became Tel Aviv and um he was saying that well if you’re a farmer and you’re driving a tractor and it’s Shabbat you can’t say well the
Tractor was pushing itself I was just steering it because you were actually controll controlling the tractor and a basis for that is kind of here in a medieval source is from in his commentary on the shabat and he differentiates between two different uses of an animal
So if a person is plowing with an animal that’s in a yoke um then and it’s Shabbat let’s say and so someone says hey you’re guilty of you are doing a forbidden labor on Shabbat Sabbath plowing right they can’t say oh I’m not doing it I’m just standing here the
Donkey’s doing all the work it’s pulling it right because you’re completely controlling the donkey it’s in a yoke and um and therefore it’s just like a tool in your hand you can’t say if you’re hammering on Shabbat you got you’re holding a hammer and you’re
Driving a nail into a wood you can’t say well I’m not actually hammering the hammer is doing the hammering I’m just holding the hammer I’m I’m pointing it in the right direction but the actual work is being done by the metal head no you’re in complete control of this process
And so therefore you are liable for the work that you are doing through this machine simple machine um so so to with an animal but then he gives another example that has to do with carrying on Shabbat and imagine you have a pack animal let’s
Say it’s a donkey again and um you’re at home and you put a load on the back of the donkey and then you go yala you know go go to Kayla’s house and the donkey sets off and it’s we’ve done this enough times during the week that it knows
Where it’s going and so it goes to Kay’s house carrying this load bunch of CED because Kayla’s having a big doing at her house okay so could happen right but you forgot you forgot to get Cedar before Shabbat and now there’s no a so what are you gonna
Do so I’m like oh we’ll use the donkey and the donkey is going to stop along the way it’s going to get a sip of water from the stream it’s going to chew on some crass it might go it might not go eventually it’ll get there so I could
Say well I’m not really responsible yeah sure I wanted it to go to but I I didn’t actually control it so in the Hebrew the last three lines is like from the word like a donkey driver right so um so the it’s not similar to a donkey driver because
The animal goes in its own way at its own pace and it kind of knows a little bit of what you want but um it does its own thing so here you’ve got a differentiation between a machine I’m sorry between an animal that’s doing exactly what it’s told and another one
Which sort of uh has more Independence and so again this might be relevant to an autonomous machine if I say if I call an Uber just before Shabbat and I say take me across town and I get in the back of the car and it’s already
Charged to my credit card and then the machine drives in its own route and it stops at red lights and for pedestrians and it makes turns and it goes away that I wouldn’t have expected it’s not really like the person driving the um plowing it’s a bit more like that
Donkey and so arguably using machines in this way would um allow you to evade some responsibility whether it’s for damages that are caused um if the machine were to hit somebody let’s say you would say oh I didn’t do that that was my car that did it um and I wasn’t
Even driving it I was doing my email in the back um and also perhaps to allow us to drive on Shabbat because we wouldn’t be the ones who were making that decision anyway that’s the question um now of an Uber is also an interesting example because even if say I’m in an
Uber or a car service or a a regular taxi where the driver is driving and God forbid a damage the car hits something and causes damage is there are people who will be liable the taxi hire company or the auto or the Car Hire company will be liable the driver will likely be
Liable but for the passenger to be liable for any of the damages would have to probably be some extenda circumstances well isn’t that the problem Cayla because who really is responsible in this case um is it so I ordered the ride and I was sitting in there and I was
Benefiting from it and so it went over and it ran over someone’s dog so maybe it’s me or maybe it’s the person who owns the car which is some company or maybe it’s the the sales people who sold the car or maybe it’s the manufacturer or maybe it’s the engineer who created
The algorith them but it sounds like there’s enough degrees of removal that you know in in halaka land where we’re deciding you know car damages in front of a baon you’d be this would in this the passenger would be further down on the list of the people to be charged right
Right because we do have this idea of like Shany and schi and and there’s also a sense of um there’s K and k k like a something that so for instance if I shoot an arrow and it hits a rock which Ricochet and then hits another rock and and puts
Someone’s eye out you know you could say well yeah I was responsible because I set the whole chain of events into motion or you could say no no um it was too unpredictable and I at some point the responsibility breaks down another is freak accidents so I set a fire I was
Burning leaves in my backyard and it was a safe fire I thought but then this huge gust of wind comes and blows the the the fire to your yard and now all of a sudden your Gish you know your pile of grain is Up in Flames and I say whoever
Saw such a wind right and um it’s a Ru Lya you know it’s not a common type of wind and so um you could say the the Tesla manufacturer let’s say well that’s true the Tesla in automatic mode did run into that white truck um that’s true but
It was an unusual scenario because it was a truck that Blended in with the background and it this and that and these things changed and um and so we’re not really responsible because it was a freak accident at what point do we say well that’s not a good enough excuse um
And I think that when it comes to lethality it start so maybe for chabas we’re talking about shabat maybe we’re going to say that enough steps of removal from the direct action makes it into something what the rabis is called grma which is sort of like an indirect
Action in which case you could say all right you know maybe I’m not responsible but when it comes to something that um has life and death significance then perhaps we want to say that yes the responsibility should be broader and even a person who um who you
Know used this tool even though they didn’t intend to cause the harm they would be considered like the um like the wood Chopper where the axe handle you know head flies off and kills someone it’s it’s not murder but it is manslaughter and there are consequences
In in their case of having to go to the E clot um I’m going to do one more or two more texts here um so at the beginning you know I asked about about whether we have any models for um sort of agents that are not human representing us and there are other
Examples we didn’t go into like creating a an a orat using a d an animal like a elephant to carry the the um the a of um the Bish but um you know there are some strange texts in Judaism that have to do with um sort of humanlike agents and the most
Famous is the Golem um now the golum doesn’t appear in the talmud but this story does appear in the talmud and you as you’ll see it’s it’s kind of the source of a lot of medieval gololog um so this is a in B seden 65b and um it’s a story about two rabbis
And his if the righteous really wanted they could make an entire world because there a verse right so your sins are all that separates you from God so if you don’t sin if you’re a sadik then you’re kind of divine right and if you’re Divine then you can um actually create just
Like like God can create and there are um references to this I I guess I should give a little more background you know there’s this idea of um that the righteous can use a book the earliest book of Jewish mysticism which is called sa I mean arguably the Torah is the
Earliest book of Jewish mysticism because what’s more mystical than you know God spoke to Moses that’s a mystical thing right but Mator is a mystical thing but um but there is this book called sa for which seems to go back to Early rinic times and part of it
What it does is it plays on a strange verse in um chapter two of of Genesis where it says these are the this is the story the history of the Heaven and Earth in their creation beam this sort of passive form and in a midra called br is rearranged
Asam this is the creation of the Heaven and the Earth through Abraham and in this mystical book sa it says that Abraham knew the secrets of creation from god of what letter combinations and what with numbers were used to create and so when you remember that story of Abraham and the three
Angels and Par v um V sorry um uh when that incident happened um it says that V abah Abraham ran to the to the cattle or to the the um the young calf that he had made and in sa they believe that this means that Abraham actually made the
Calf using sa I’m sorry it’s a quote that thinks that he used sa and that’s why he was able to serve Dairy and meat together because it was a magical animal right um so and according to this in another Tom mic story animals made with saer don’t have the status of animals
And therefore they’re not fling right and so this is important for my lab grown meat um Chua which is a different project so anyway here ISS that the righteous could create a world um so then it goes on it says this crazy thing Raa bar gav so rava created you know the word
Like gav is a g he made a man Shad the kame to R and he sent it before RAB so you can imagine the scene right Raa like takes this guy he makes him somehow and sends him knocking on his friend’s door and so RAB was there and started talking to
It but it wasn’t able to respond to him so rer is talking to this person but the person’s not talking back so says to him you come from the Friends The Magicians the fellowship something like that um there’s a lot of theory about atmology of here but um there’s auk that
Says a person who casts a spell so it could be that this like the spellcasters you you’re a magical creature go back to your dirt in other words dissolve and so raber as it were dissolves this Mudman um kills it I guess um and then there’s another story about
These rabbis every Friday would study and they would make a a little calf of third grown calf a and they would eat it so you’ve got the sense that the the great sainted rabbis of the talmud were capable of doing these incredible Feats so um that story from Raa
Barav was the source of a lot of medieval Legends and um the most famous One um is of a rabbi called Elijah of khalal is a real cting it’s not just this joke town it’s um it’s a real City in Poland and there was this Rabbi whose um son was ashkanazi
Theam and or his grandson I’m sorry and then s ashkanazi son in term was Rabbi Yakov Amden one of the great rabbis of uh of um Germany anyway there’s this whole story here about he’s relating to this thing about the safer I’ve wondered I didn’t bring the
Whole Hebrew text forgive me it’s just long but I’ve wondered regarding a person created by means of the saf such as that one mentioned in s hedrin ra created a man and also such as the one attested to my great-grandfather our teacher of Elijah Chief Justice of
The Holy commun whether such a man could be included in the minion of 10 from matters which require 10 such is kades and kadua do we say that since it is written I should be Sanctified am the children of Israel bash is that he may not be counted since he’s not Part B
Israel after all this is a mud guy that was just created yesterday he’s not been a Israel so he doesn’t count on the Minion or perhaps considering the statement in Sanhedrin that is what it says in the talid although there’s a textual variant that says Assa right whoever raises an orphan in
Their home it’s as if they gave birth to them um or maybe even that they created them the scripture would raise up the Golem to the status of the one born to them so when you adopt a child you become their parent and according to this you really become their parent so
In a way maybe the Golem is really this rabbi’s child and therefore has the same status of being a human for scripture mentions the five children of mikal this is mikal b sha daughter of King Saul but did mik give birth to them didn’t may give birth then says didn’t she give birth
Them rather May gave birth and mikal raised them and so this is an adoptive relationship here too since the man is the handiwork of the righteous he might be considered part of Israel for we learn and this is another quote told that um the Deeds of the rightous
Are their actual children um if so the goem might be counted and now he says but he’s going to say well but maybe not it seems to me that since rabi Zer said you are from The Fellowship of magicians returned to the Earth you know that he killed him and if it had
Occurred to him that the Golem could be included among the 10 matters of kadha would not have removed him from the world even though killing the Golem is not considered murder and now it’s another beautiful from you probably know this it’s a um chastic structure in this
Case ABC CB you know what that means AB BC CBA right so spill D blood Adam of a personam by a person d his blood is shall will be spilled so basically it’s saying if you murder then you’ll be killed but he’s reading it hyper literally if you kill a person who is
Born of a person excuse me if you kill a person who is Adam Adam a person who comes from a person meaning a person who is born to a woman only then are you liable for murder but if you kill a person who was not made by another per through another
Person but was done through magic then it’s not murder only killing such a person would be considered murder thus excluding the man made by rava who was not formed in his mother’s womb nevertheless since the Golem had some utility raber should not have removed him from the world but certainly he
Would not count among the 10 thus it seems to me asazi and then a little puzzle here he signs off his Sam which usually when you see that it stands for tahor you know but what’s his name askanazi so that’s weird isn’t it like so uh and he he’s got the title K
So in theory he was a ashkanazi guy living who went off to study in turkey and got the title so he was living as a fari but what he really be then um it’s a little bit like the Aral RAB Isaac Lor who was born in an ashkanazi family but
But was educated in Egypt in a safari environment so he was called the ashaz unless it means El eloh like the Divine anyway maybe it just means saava he may he come to a good End by the way there’s a little bit more about the golum in Rabbi yakob emden he
Preserves another family tradition that um Rabbi Elijah of um killed the Golem himself because it was getting too big and uh he was scared of it so he it had a kamama on its neck and he he took off the Divine name and it went back to dirt now you
Might be looking at me with some puzzlement and saying I know this story but it’s not about Elijah it’s it’s about the maharal in Prague um so so it’s interesting because there are no contemporaneous texts of the maharal of Prague that have anything to do with the golum um it was really
Only in the 19th century the late 19th century that there’s this Scully article called how the golum came to Prague um which where the story was kind of transferred from theam from the Elijah to his contemporary in Prague the better known maharal um and also uh in
This book that added and claimed that it was really about the maharal um it was uh a book called Mahar it’s a late 19th century book um it also pairs it with a blood liel in which the Jews are being attacked because of a blood liel and the
Golem comes to their defense all right so those are the texts I brought for you so I’m just going to say a couple of takeaways and you have any questions then we’ll conclude um some of the things that we considered tonight are um are we responsible for
Actions taken on our behalf by a machine and if you can use the model of the courtyard or the model of animals which I also talk about in the chuva then you might be able to say that no you’re not responsible for the actions of a machine um except you might then
Differentiate as we saw with ramban between actions where you are directly controlling the machine um like hammering you know or driving a car or a tractor um and ones which uh you are benefiting from an independent action by the machine and we might say that those actions would still be user but they
Would be in the um the deran level the lower level where you would say p you you’re not liable because you didn’t do the action yourself but you still shouldn’t do it and so um so we might make that lower level determin Nation um
By the way um there was a great Rabbi in the 20th century in um Israel uh he started life in America name of arenstein he was the Riva of yesion the gush and toward the end of his life he wrote a long essay about a long essay by
Ramban on the D deame um laws of independ in indirect work and in it r lonstein said that um a smart thief might be able to use technology to evade responsibility so I don’t steal Kayla from you but um I might set up an algorithm to try to figure out ways to
Break into people’s bank accounts and then transfer money and I’m not telling it to break into your account or anyone in particulars account I’m just having it look for for vulnerabilities and so if I get haul into court like you stole all this money from all these people I’d
Say no I know I just created an algorithm and then I was the beneficiary of what it did right so you could in theory get off of Full liability because you didn’t directly do the stealing um and ravenstein was saying that Weis must come up with Solutions so that people’s
Range of responsibility gets extended and here I want to mention a philosopher named Hans yonas who was a German Jewish philosopher who wrote a book called The imperative of responsibility in which he said that in a time of great technology we should expand our realm of responsibility and make sure that we
Become responsible for not only our own actions but actions done by machines on our behalf and not only in the approximate range like immediate but also uh distant range he was talking more about environmental damage that might not be fully realized for a few Generations but those who created the
The conditions should also be responsible um I do think when it comes to weapon systems that human should always be in the loop and that we should all be working hard to prevent the development of fully autonomous lethal weapon systems that can kill without our consent so I’m going to end with that
Shashana Kayla do either of you questions or comments no question just a comment that unfortunately with a quote that I can unfortunately not Source at this moment that no computer should make a no one should let a computer make a decision entirely on its own which is absolutely
Not what the quote says but that compute a lot of these things while they have their own capability to kind of go off and do whatever are made by humans maintained by humans monitored by humans have all sorts of connections with other software or backups or whatever that are controlled by humans
So there’s something they said so you know it’s this is an interesting to see like how much how auton how truly autonomous is what we would think an autonomous thing is and even if it’s not that autonomous should we be responsible for it I don’t know that’s what I was
Thinking yeah that’s a good question and um you know one of the things that’s a little bit alarming is that artificial intelligence has moved away from the original design where humans would write the code and um and create algorithms which would be used by the machines
These days the the trend is is towards what’s called machine learning where the machines are basically given a large environment and just analyze the environment and look for their own patterns and um as long as they’ve got a goal um like a prompt to a large language model like cha gbt you know
Write me a poem in the style of Shakespeare or whatever um they then figure it out on their own you don’t have all these algorithms that tell them how to do it it’s more they’re looking at Shakespeare language and trying to find that um let’s Shan has a comment
Here generally these machines can only do as much as they’re taught even if they’re acting quote autonomously it’s because they’ve been trained to do do those things in certain instances or certain promts correct but we don’t know where things go from here right um and so as these
Machines Master more and more um information um you know will they at some point you know start to identify goals that would be worthy and and and act unprompted that’s question that remains to be seen but for now I would say that um I guess to you kale I would say well certainly
If it’s going to affect another human like medication or a parole decision or an application for insurance or a military situation any of those things I think a human’s got to be involved and not let the machines decide and you know have such a big impact on us so I’m going to
End there and um thank you to Shana and anybody who’s on Facebook live or who you know downloads this later um I hope it’s useful to you and if you like you can get my book in March uh Tor in technology and read more about this for
Yourself all right thank you everyone I hope to see you for the final class next week I hope you’d enjoyed enjoy enjoyed hearing Rabbi Nevan speak we have more Springs Monon classes that are still ongoing and if you if you want to check them out you can sign up at
5784 dos spring. treca.org take care and have a good night everyone good night