Once, when people had questions, they sought answers from rabbis, teachers, or a professional specific to their queries. About 30 years ago, search engines placed the vast treasure (and trash) of human knowledge at our fingertips. Search engines returned a list of sources, allowing us to compare perspectives and draw our own conclusions.  Artificial intelligence is changing the equation again, except instead of showing us information, AI takes that vast treasure and trash, synthesizes it, and offers up a single response that  summarizes, explains, recommends, and sometimes persuades. This gives AI an aura of authority that makes the pursuit of truth more important than ever.

This shift makes one particular ancient Jewish value more relevant than ever. Emet (truth), in Jewish tradition, is not merely a preference or a virtue among many. It is a moral obligation. The Torah commands us, “Distance yourself from falsehood” (Exodus 23:7). The wording is striking. We are not simply told not to lie, but rather we are instructed to keep our distance from falsehood itself. Judaism recognizes that deception has a way of spreading, distorting judgment, damaging relationships, and undermining justice.

Artificial intelligence makes this commandment more important because AI can create, scale, and automate deception at an unprecedented level.

The New Challenge to Truth

AI can perform astonishing feats, but unlike a human expert, AI does not actually “know” whether something is true. It predicts the most likely sequence of words based on patterns extracted from enormous amounts of data. Most of the time, those predictions are remarkably useful.

And sometimes it is capable of being spectacularly wrong while sounding absolutely confident. “Hallucinations,” as they are called, include such errors as invented quotations, fabricated court cases, statements........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)