Do We Have Any Advantage Over Machines? On The Existentialist Implications of Generative AI

Leonard Oppenheimer: I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mois Navon. He’s one of the founding engineers of MobilEye, where he designed the IQ family of SoC – that’s System on a Chip, a chip powering the Autonomous Vehicle revolution. 

He holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Computer Engineering from UCLA, as well as an MA and a PhD degree in Jewish Philosophy from Bar Ilan University. In addition to being ordained as a Rabbi through Yeshivat Mercaz Harav, working at the intersection of Torah U’mada, his doctoral dissertation is entitled the Moral Status of Artificial Intelligence and addresses ethical questions arising in the field of AI, which we’ve already heard some of today. 

In this vein, he teaches a course (which is how we found out about him) called Ethics in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence at Ben Gurion University. His work can be found on the Internet. And with that, Rabbi Navon, do you want to share your screen? Everyone is excited to hear from you. And he’s presenting to us from Peru today.

Mois Navon: Excellent. Okay, so first of all, thank you very much for inviting me, for having me. Yes, I live in Israel, but currently I’m giving talks on AI and ethics in Peru, of all places. They found me, somehow, in South America, and so I’m happy to go wherever they’re interested in hearing about this topic. 

I’d also like to thank David Zvi. He’s also a big exponent of these issues of AI and ethics, as you just heard. I would like to just comment on the issue of “How do we relate to AI?” That’s exactly the topic of my dissertation. And I would like to say that there’s no doubt that we are wired to interact with beings that look and act and speak like us. But we have to make a distinction between those that have consciousness, or a soul, and those that don’t. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t relate to them in a positive way. 

And that’s really the topic of my dissertation. As I said, it’s split, really, into two: how do we deal with AI humanoids that are run by machine learning, and humanoids that in the future, people are actually today working on, making conscious AI?

But anyway, let’s talk about what I had planned to speak to you today, which is do we have any advantage over a machine? This is a little play on words from Kohelet, “Does man have any advantage over the animal?” Actually, Kohelet didn’t ask the question. He made a statement. I’m asking the question here. Now, AI, as you heard from David Zvi, didn’t start yesterday when we all became aware of ChatGPT. I’ll just go over a quick history of it. 

It really went through what’s called “AI summers” and “AI winters.” – summers where there was funding for AI development, winters where there wasn’t. Hinton now explains that we will only see summers because AI is so integrated into society. But in any case, AI really started, as David Zvi mentioned, at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956. John McCarthy stated the mission statement: “Every aspect of learning, or any other feature of intelligence, can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve the kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.” In short, the mission statement of artificial intelligence is to build people.  

Now, since 1956, many decades went by and nobody really paid attention to the computer geeks in their labs around the world until about 1992, when the machines beat us at Checkers. But we didn’t really give that so much attention because really, Checkers – I mean, that’s a kid’s game, right? So we didn’t pay attention. 

And then in 1997, the machines beat us at chess. So chess is a little more serious. And we said, “Wow, that’s pretty good.” But we weren’t really threatened because, I mean, chess, okay, it’s a game. But then in 2016, the machines beat us at Go. Now in the West, we don’t really pay so much attention to Go, but Go is the most complicated board game on the face of the planet. 

In comparison with chess, which has 10¹²³ possible moves. Go has 10²³⁰. That’s huge. You can’t program a machine like that with “if/then else,” or case statements, or any of the other ways which are known as good old-fashioned AI. You need to have something on the order of intelligence. 

And so now we said, “Well, okay, it has intelligence, but you know, it’s not really intelligence per se that matters. It’s what you do with your intelligence.” And human beings really do special things with our intelligence. I mean, we are creative. 

But then generative AI came along, and generative AI is creative in text, image, speech, video, code, music, just about every place that human beings are creative.  And it makes art – really good art. And of course it makes text. 

This is a little example. I asked ChatGPT, “Can you explain Rav Soloveitchik’s approach to human creativity?” And of course, it gave me a great summary of Rav Soloveitchik’s approach. But what’s interesting is that in the second paragraph, it says, “According to Soloveitchik, human creativity is characterized by two distinct types: cognitive creativity and intuitive creativity.”

Now, I realize that that’s actually true about Rav Soloveitchik’s approach, but I never saw those terms in any of his writings. So I wrote ChatGPT, and I said, “I don’t remember reading those terms in Rav Soloveitchik.” And ChatGPT said, “You’re right. I made up those terms in order to explain to you his approach more concisely.” So that’s creative, in my book.

In any case, philosophers are now saying that this world that we are now in, this “information revolution,” is causing us to ask that existential question that Darwin caused us to ask in relation to animals. When the Darwinian theory came forward, people [had to] answer this question, “How are we different than animals? Are we just sophisticated monkeys?” Now that’s obviously a question for another shiur, or I hope you realize that we are very different. But in any case, now the question is, “How are we different or unique from machines?” To answer that question, we go back to the creation of human beings. “Vayivra Elohim et ha-Adam b’tzalmo, b’tzelem elohim [bara oto]” (Genesis 1:27 – “And God created humankind in the divine image, creating humans in the image of God”) what makes us unique is that we have this image of God. 

But what exactly is that image of God, and what does it give us? So the Midrash says “b’tzelem Elohim – zu neshama,” so, “we have a soul.” But again, so what does that soul give us? The Zohar says, basically, “b’tzalmo: la’asot kol tzarchei ha’olam” – basically, that what this b’tzelem Elohim gives us is the ability to do everything that human beings do. 

So we’re still kind of not getting down to the nitty-gritty.  So I bring you – Rav Soloveitchik says it very clearly:

There is no doubt that the term “image of God” refers to man’s inner charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man’s likeness to God expresses itself in man’s striving and ability to become a creator. He engages in creative work, trying to imitate his maker, imitatio dei. 

So, for Rav Soloveitchik – and there are many explanations of b’tzelem Elohim, but I believe that this really helps us move forward here. B’tzelem Elohim is that ability to be like God, the creator. What makes us special is that we are creative beings. 

So then the question, of course, becomes: “So what’s the difference between our creativity and a machine’s creativity?” So here I bring you a quote from a book called Artists in the Machine. It’s really a great book that goes over all the art and creativity that machines can do. It’s written by a professor by the name of Arthur Miller, not the famous playwright, but a modern philosopher. 

In any case, he says there are two types of creativity: “little-C” creativity and “big-C” creativity. “Little-C” creativity is an everyday experience, such as thinking up a new route to work – discovering something of value and surprise, at least for the discoverer. Machines have reached “little-C” creativity long ago. “Big-C” creativity is a transformational idea, an idea that no one has ever had before. 

So did machines reach this? I bring for you an explanation of the Go machine that beat the world champion, the human champion, Lee Sedol. This is how it’s explained. 

“And in one extraordinary move during the Sedol match, it displayed” – the machine displayed – “a form of what we might call creativity.” 

Commenting on the match, the European Go champion, Fan Hui, remarked, “It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this, and it went against centuries of received wisdom.” I would say that that is exactly the description of Big-C creativity. 

However, even if you don’t believe me on that, let’s listen to what Amnon Shashua, the founder and CEO of Mobilize, said about the AlphaGo game. He said that AlphaGo, [which] beat Lee Sedol, “was an engineering feat. AlphaGo Zero, which is the machine that destroyed AlphaGo later, was nothing short of miraculous.” 

Now, I’m not exactly sure how religious Amnon Shashua is, but for him to call AlphaGo Zero “miraculous”… is miraculous. Basically, what he’s saying is the difference between a miracle and an engineering feat is that we understand how AlphaGo 1 [works] – it was alluded to in machine learning, where we give it tons and tons and tons of games, and it learns how to play the game from all the prior games that it was fed. AlphaGo Zero was not given one game, it was one – or it learned how to play, based on the rules and what’s called reinforcement learning, and it never saw a game. It played against itself until it understood how to win, and it destroyed AlphaGo, its predecessor. So anyway, if that’s Big-C creativity or not, I would venture to say that it is. And even if it’s not, the machines are on their way to Big-C creativity. 

So then the question again becomes, what is human worth? If human worth is that we are creative, and machines now are just as creative, what is our value? There are philosophers today who have already written that we have reached the stage of dinosaurs, and we need to literally exit stage left. Of course, as a rabbi and a believer in God and the purpose of the world, I can’t accept that. 

So let me share with you what I believe is the answer to this question of “Do we have any advantage over a machine?” And for that, we return back to the creation of man:

“Vatere ha-ishah ki tov ha’etz l’ma’achal, v’chi ta’a’va hu l’einayim v’nichmad ha’etz l’haskil v’tikach miprio v’tochal, v’titein gam l’ishah imah v’yokhal.” (Genesis 3:6) 

One of the first stories that we learn about Adam and Eve is that Eve saw the tree, saw the fruit, saw that it looked good, tastes good, feels good – and said, “let’s have it.” Basically, what we learn in this story of human nature is that we have the insatiable capacity to succumb to temptation. That’s what splits us from the animals. Rob Hirsch writes: “Animals don’t do wrong. They’re not tempted.” There’s a great essay by a philosopher by the name of Drew McDormand. He explains that machines, no matter how we’re going to program them, are not going to be tempted like human beings. 

So what really makes us unique is our capacity to sin, or in other words, our yetzer hara. And so then the question really becomes, “Is that what we want to be proud of, that we have a yetzer hara – that’s what separates us from the machines?” 

So, the answer is “yes.” If we take a look at this Midrash Tanchuma, it says:

“Lo bara HaKadosh Baruch Hu shenikra ‘tzadik v’yashar’ et ha’adam b’tzalmo, ele k’dei l’hayot ‘tzadik v’yashar’ k’mohu.” 

“God created human beings in His image [b’tzelem Elohim] to be like Him. Just like God is righteous and straight, so He created man in his image to be righteous and straight.” 

“V’im tomar, lama bara yetzer hara…” 

“So then you’ll say, but then why did he give us this yetzer hara which makes us not be righteous and straight…” 

“Shekatuv bo, ‘ki yatzar lev ha’adam ra m’na’arav?” 

“Because we say that our yetzer, this drive that we have, is evil from when we are little?” 

“Atah omer, she’hu ra mi yakhol la’asoto tov? Amar HaKadosh Barcukh Hu, ‘Atah oseh ra!’ Yetzer hara m’sur bayadecha.”

So you’ll ask, “Why did you give me this thing that makes me evil and not act like you, God, and straight and righteous? So God answers, and says, “You, human being, make it ra, make it evil. “Yetzer hara m’sur bayadecha..” It’s a power, this yetzer hara, this evil inclination, which is given into your hands.”

What this midrash is saying is that the yetzer hara is not ra. The evil inclination is not evil. It’s an inclination that humans make evil. What it’s saying is this is a drive. It’s the drive that makes us get up in the morning. It’s the drive that makes us go out into the world and do whatever human beings creatively do.  

Unfortunately, that same drive is used by human beings to do evil. And so we call it the yetzer hara. But it’s not ra. It’s not evil in essence. It’s just the drive to do, and we do evil with it, unfortunately.

There’s another great midrash that says, even further:

“Rav, berei d’Shmuel, b’shem Shmuel amar, “Vayar Elohim et kol asher asah v’hinei tov me’od.” 

So Rav, who is the son of Shmuel, said, in the name of his father, “God looked at the world after he created it, and he said, tov me’od,’ “it’s really good.”  

So Shmuel says, “What is very good?” It’s the yetzer hara. That’s what’s very good in creation. How can that be? Could the key be that the evil inclination is called “good”? Yes. 

“Ki yetzer hara ki tov, eleh l’lamed, she’ilmule yetzer hara, lo hayah adam nosah ishah, v’lo holid mimena banim, v’lo hayah ha’alom mitkayem.” 

“The reason that the yetzer hara is called good, or even very good, is because without the yetzer hara, man would not get married, would not have children, and the world would cease to exist.”

And you don’t really need to be a Hebrew grammarian to understand that the word yetzer is connected to the word yetzira – “creativity”! And so this essential thing that we have inside us, which characterizes human beings, this yetzer, is that power to be yetzerati – this inclination is the power to be creative. 

And so now we come across this tension, this dichotomy, where we have a yetzer hara that on the one hand is evil – it’s the source of sin – but on the other hand, it’s very good;  it’s the source of creativity. So how can we reconcile these two ends, these two extremes, of good and evil? 

So Rav Soloveitchik says the answer is teshuvah. Now, what Rav Soloveitchik is saying, in a sense, is that we need to take our yetzer, our power for creativity, and we need to do teshuvah – we need to repent. We need to make ourselves good again, creatively. And that’s how we use our yetzer – to do teshuvah and create ourselves in a better way. 

But you don’t need Rav Soloveitchik – probably the greatest Jewish philosopher of the 20th century – to tell you to repent. I mean, the Torah says that. The Talmud says that. The Rambam says it. Your siddur says “repent.” Soloveitchik is saying something much deeper. He’s saying, “Of course you need to overcome the negative things that you do.” But he’s saying it’s much more than that – “Teshuvah really is not just repentance, it’s return. And you need to return to yourself, to your better self, to your best self.” He says repentance, according to the Halachic view, is an act of creation, self-creation. “Man, through repentance, creates himself, his own ‘I.’”

Teshuvah is that method of returning to our better selves. It’s a process that’s your whole life. Of course, you need to put aside all the bad things that you do and try not to do those. But you need to do much more. Teshuvah is about creating yourself. And that’s how it’s connected to yetzer and yetzira. 

And if we go on, how, at what point do you need to end this process? It ends with prophecy. So this is a sentence from Rav Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man. It says as follows: 

“The most exalted creation of all is the personality of the prophet. Each person is obligated to give new life to his own being by modeling his personality on the image of the prophet.”

I have to say that when I first read this many years ago, I was shocked – “Rav Soloveitchik is telling me I need to be a prophet!?” I mean, I have lots of aspirations in life, but “prophet” was never on the list. I mean – he doesn’t say “it’s a nice idea.” He doesn’t say, “Yeah, try to do this.” He says, “You are obligated to become a prophet.”

How can he say that? Of course he knows that prophecy has been taken away from humanity, already, a long time ago. What is he talking about, that I have to become a prophet?

So if we understand, Rav Soloveitchik is saying that we need to be the best that we can be – and he’s using the image of the prophet as described by the Rambam in Yesodei haTorah, which says:

“M’yesodei hadat leida…”

“The foundation of religion is to understand…”

“she’ha’El m’nabe et b’nei ha’Adam…” 

“that God gives prophecy to people…”

“V’ein hanevuah halah eleh al chacham gadol b’chochmah gibur b’midotav v’lo y’hei yitzro mitgavar alav.”

And so the Rambam says, “But this prophecy will not come to anybody unless he is very wise in wisdom and he has overcome all of his character traits. He is a very moral person, and he has overcome his yetzer. He no longer has this yetzer that does ra. He has overcome it.”

So basically, what the Rambam is saying is, “If you want to be a prophet, it’s not up to you to get that prophecy. It’s up to God to give you the prophecy. However, what is up to you is to perfect yourself in wisdom and in morals. Those two aspects are in your hands.” 

And that’s exactly what Rav Soloveitchik is saying: “Creation finds its expression in man’s fulfilling all of his tasks, causing all of the potentiality implanted in him to emerge into actuality utilizing all of his manifold possibilities and bringing to fruition his own noble personality.” That’s what Rav Soloveitchik wants out of us. That’s what he says life is about. It’s about creating yourself and becoming the best self that you can be. 

So let’s try to answer that question again: what is the advantage of human beings over the machine? A human being, like we said, is creative. He can make art, he can make all kinds of things that human beings are creative about.

But we said, “the machines can do that now too.” So it can’t possibly be that our advantage over the machines is being creative in the sense of producing art and text and movies and code and et cetera. Rather, what the machines cannot produce is us ourselves. Life is not about producing. It’s about becoming. 

Marc Chagall, when he paints his beautiful paintings, is not producing this beautiful painting. He is producing himself. He is becoming the artist. Creativity is not about creating something – creativity is about creating someone. Thank you very much.