TRADITION Questions: The Rabbi & AI
Josh Flug joins us as a guest columnist for TRADITION Questions. Click here to read about this series.
What is it?
I recently wrote a d’var Torah for a publication, and on a whim, mostly for my own entertainment, I uploaded it to Google’s notebooklm to generate an AI podcast discussing what I had written, which contained a parenthetical comment unrelated to the d’var Torah itself. Yet the “podcasters” decided to emphasize the connection between my central point and the tangent. The experiment taught me two things: I hadn’t written the parenthetical comment clearly enough, and my own human intelligence had overlooked the connection between the two points which I myself had written.
Generative AI products such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini have become ubiquitous over the last two years. Employees in various sectors are concerned that some of their tasks may be replaced by AI and this concern extends to rabbis as well. Will the rabbi be called on less to help someone prepare a d’var Torah, answer a question about the parasha or Daf Yomi, or paskin a halakhic question? Currently, someone who has used Generative AI for Torah-related matters might describe the interaction as follows: The model comes across like a B+ student who hasn’t really pursued serious Torah learning since graduating high school, is very convinced that his knowledge and interpretation of Torah matters is accurate, and is very good at communicating what he thinks he knows. We are now in February 2025, and the media is predicting that a Ph.D. level model will be released in the next few months. Perhaps this critical characterization is only temporary portrait of where the quickly improving technology is at the moment.
Why it matters
A recent cartoon portrayed the following situation. Jon is seen telling a co-worker that with AI, he was able to save so much time. He put in a single bullet points and AI generated a well-written 500-word email. In the next frame, Liz is seen telling her co-worker that with AI, she was able to save so much time. She just received a 500 word email from Jon, and AI was able to boil it down to a single bullet point!
As “AI efficiency” becomes part of our culture, it will pose a serious challenge for rabbis and educators trying to teach Torah lessons using pedagogical methods that require the learner to employ amelut, toil and effort, a trait very much valued by our tradition. At the same time, it can be a useful tool to engage people in the few minutes that they have over the course of their busy day or while they are scrolling through their feeds. Maybe seeing the “one minute version” of the shiur will encourage them to listen to the recording of the whole shiur and/or participate next time.
[On these conflicting values in Talmud Torah see R. Norman Lamm’s “Knowing vs. Learning: Which Takes Precedence?” in Wisdom From All My Teachers (ATID, 2003).]
Until recently, when people spoke of “Rabbi Google” it still required the user to read through the various web pages that Google helped find. Now, even that is not a requirement. Generative AI can produce a d’var Torah that will likely sound very generic and lack any creativity. It can summarize today’s Daf Yomi in a few bullet points, for those who only have a few minutes, but is that the goal? Without getting into the merits of whether AI can provide a reliable answer to a halakhic question — there is a lot to be said about this — shailot also provide an opportunity for a rabbi to interact with his congregants and students, above and beyond providing teshuvot.
What questions remain
How do we find the happy medium between efficiency and amelut? How do rabbis foster a culture of investing time and energy in Torah study when the winds are blowing in the opposite direction? What uses of AI can help the rabbi so that he can spend more time focusing on his important roles? How can AI be used as a research tool to help the rabbi prepare his derashot and shiurim without compromising on his integrity or the quality of his teaching? How can it be used to help brainstorm ideas or sharpen how these ideas are communicated? How can AI tools help supplement or enhance the teaching materials that a rabbi traditionally uses?
Rabbi Josh Flug is Director of Torah Publications for the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. Read more about his thoughts on AI at Torah To-Go.