“Artificial intimacy: who do we become when we talk to machines?” This is the title of an interview conducted earlier this year with Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT who has spent her career studying the impact of digital technologies on our inner lives. Turkle is concerned that the growing trend of using AI chatbots as friends, lovers, confidants, and therapists will diminish our capacity to empathize and to accept and live with vulnerability. This leads Turkle to suggest a litmus test when considering any AI tool: “Does the AI enhance inner life, or does it inhibit inner life?”
Character development and the cultivation of a spiritually-oriented inner life are at the center of many faith traditions, and religious communities have a growing interest in the broader topic of the relations between digital technologies and character. Fortunately, during the 20th century, when the phrases “technological society” and “technological age” first appeared, some theologians turned their attention to the technology of their time. What they wrote may offer us both inspiration and guidance as we address contemporary challenges.
One such figure was Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), a leading Jewish theologian, historian, and social activist in 20th-century Germany and America. He devoted himself to the renewal of Jewish life and faith (which he thought had become too secular and pragmatic) and to the proposition that a Jewish way of thinking and behaving could help overcome what many in the mid-20th century called “the crisis of Western civilization.”
For Heschel, the foundational problem with modern technology was its negative impact on our inner lives. Advances in energy production, transportation, communication, building construction, and medical care had the cumulative effect of increasing our hubris. He wrote, “Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science and technique, we have been deluded into believing that we are the masters of the earth and our will [is] the ultimate judge of what is right and wrong.”
Technological development also created artificial needs and made us more aggressive in the quest to satisfy them: “There are no material wants that science and technology do not promise to supply. To stem the expansion of man’s needs, which in turn is brought about by technological and social advancement, would mean to halt the stream on which civilization is riding. Yet the stream unchecked may sweep away civilization, since the pressure of needs turned into aggressive interests is the constant cause of wars and increases in direct proportion to technological progress.”
The result was that we lost our connection with God and became self-centered, viewing nature and people as mere things to use for our selfish desires: “He who sets out to employ the realities of life as means for satisfying his own desires will soon forfeit his freedom and be degraded to a mere tool.” The drive for power and profit, along with the attitude that all that is possible should be done, culminated in the two World Wars, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The antidote was a renewal of authentic religious practice. Religious practice could transform our inner lives, cultivating what Heschel called “the life of piety.” An exemplar practice is the Sabbath. This celebration works because it restricts our engagement with technology, allowing us the time to connect with God: “a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs, as well as of attachment to the spirit.” The goal is inner transformation: to shift the focus of our desire from things to God’s concerns: “to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity. Things are our tools; eternity, the Sabbath, is our mate.” Indeed, all of Judaism aims for inner transformation: “the purpose of observance is to train us in achieving spiritual ends.”
The goal, Heschel asserts, is to cultivate piety: reverence, love, sensitivity to suffering, and awareness of God’s need for us to bring compassion and justice into the world. This approach to religion is aligned with what we call virtue ethics – the cultivation of good character traits as the foundation for a good life. For Heschel, this endeavor required a connection with God, for only with this connection do we have the power to tame the many contradictory impulses inside us. The 20th century had seen the eruption of unprecedented violence and barbarism, and only a God-centered effort to cultivate piety would allow us to preserve our humanity in an age dominated by ever-more-powerful technologies.
Heschel believed that piety provides us with “inner liberty … being exempt from the domination of things,” and that this allows us to make better decisions about the development and use of technology. The modern period had been characterized by saying “Yes” to ever more technological opportunities: “Omnivorous in his desire, unrestrained in his efforts, tenacious in his purpose, [man] is gradually changing the face of the earth; and there seems to be none to deny him or challenge his eminence.” So, like the prophets of Biblical times who said “No” to condemn the habits and assumptions of their time, Heschel often said “No” in his time. But his approach was broader than that. Coming to the world of technology as a pious person would mean making wise decisions about what we should do and not do, and whether we should move forward or delay our embrace of technology to address other priorities.
In the 1960s, Heschel took a stand on some of the most prominent technology issues of his day. He approached these issues by considering their relationship to our inner life.
- On space exploration: spend money to solve the problems of poverty (an act of compassion) rather than exploring space and winning the race to the moon (a sign of suspicion, pride, and indifference).
- On medical care: invest money to cure disease and relieve suffering (an act of compassion) rather than developing technologies with the aim of conquering death (an act of hubris).
- On automation: automate work using computers to ease hard labor, if those put out of work receive job training (an act of compassion), but do not automate the medical system or develop computers to replace physicians (an act of greed), since that will lead to treating patients and doctors as machines and not as persons (an act of dehumanization).
Whether or not we agree with Heschel’s overall evaluation of modern technology or his views about specific technology issues, he reminds us that the relationship between technology and character is a topic of ultimate importance to people of faith. The urgency of this topic will only increase as LLMs, chatbots, AI companions and other forms of artificial intelligence become more a part of our lives. Like social media, many of these technologies are designed to impact our inner lives – to keep our attention and manipulate our emotions. This calls us to answer these questions: What sort of inner lives do we want to cultivate? What role can religious practices play? And how should our spiritually-oriented character impact decisions about the development and use of technology?
For additional quotes and resources, see Marc’s source sheet on Sefaria.
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