The world’s religious thinkers are currently trying to figure out what to do about AI—albeit in fits and starts. Conferences are being convened. Books and articles are being commissioned. Google “Muslim approaches to AI” or “Catholic approaches to AI” and real substance will pop up. Most of this has happened in the last five years. The wheels are really turning.
But—and I say this as someone who’s been watching closely—it’s all pretty slow, and in relation to an industry which values speed above all that’s a huge problem. Religion cannot afford to be slow in a world that is moving faster than ever before.
The way you can tell it’s slow is that it is not yet possible to answer the following question: Are Muslim/Catholic/Jewish/etc. approaches to AI essentially identical, or do they differ in significant ways—and if they differ, where exactly do they differ?
This is an important question to press upon because it forces religious thinkers to get serious and decide if they want to be ethical leaders or ethical followers. It’s easy to say that your faith dictates that AI, say, not be used to exploit the weak and vulnerable; in fact it would be odd if it didn’t, because literally everybody agrees with this, pious and otherwise. A religious denomination that promotes such consensus positions isn’t going to make enemies, but it also risks getting lost in a sea of nodding heads. Indeed, if everyone wants the same thing it is often perceived as a liability to use religious language to say so, since such language can be alienating in a secular society.
This is why I am drawn to the points of disagreement, where a religious group is saying something about AI that others might not. As a Jewish thinker who works on tech issues and who has spent time speaking with AI ethicists from other faiths, here are the places where I believe Judaism’s emergent AI ethics is doing something distinctive.
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