AI vs Adam: Who Is A Real Friend?
Tech Tribe Dispatch #262
💡 Think:
The Internet has been buzzing these past few days about friend, Avi Schiffman’s always-on AI pendant. Unlike a recent slate of AI devices - like the Humane Pin, rabbit r1 and Avi’s own earlier product the AI Tab (of which friend ostensibly is a slimmed down version) - which all focused on productivity, friend is an always-listening companion. A sort of tamagotchi or Eliza the Therapist for a new generation.
If you haven’t yet, watch the ad for friend:
I think it’s very easy for people to knock friend. Everything from the idea of a “virtual friend” to the URL for the product, friend.com, which cost $1.8 Million - have been featured in the Internet’s discourse.
Avi is a sharp person - in 2020, when he was 17, he made headlines creating the first website for tracking COVID cases around the world. Before dropping out of Harvard, Avi launched a site that helped refugees fleeing from Ukraine. I have no doubt that friend can provide an accessible AI product and a solid launching ground for future, more advanced AI devices that help us in real, meaningful ways.
But I also know that loneliness is truly an epidemic: “Sixty-one percent of young people—children, teens, and young adults—suffer from serious loneliness in the United States,” says Jodi Halpern, professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at UC Berkeley.
And a device like friend is both an attempt at an answer… and part of the problem: Whatever companionship an AI friend may offer, it’s part of a deeply worrying (and long standing) trend for tech to further drive us towards a sense of existential loneliness.
Even the conversations we do have, the relationships we do build, have the affect of inuring us to reality and driving our focus to a highly curated and filtered version of life - one intermediated by devices that take our focus away from the humans around us.
I was at a conference earlier this summer on AI and Judaism. During a session on Judaism and the Metaverse, one of the speakers was of the strong opinion that congregations and Jewish communities would need to boldly adapt to a VR world.
”But what about Shabbat?” one participant asked.
“That’s only 10% of the American Jewish population,” someone else answered. “What about the other 90% that don’t keep Shabbat… Surely they can attend a metaverse minyan.”
And while, of course, there already is a Chabad of the Metaverse… I can’t help but firmly believe a Judaism predicated on the belief that it must adapt to the latest technology is not only dangerous to Judaism, but a disservice to society at large.
This week’s Torah portion shares the request of the tribes of Gad and Reuben to remain in Transjordan. As the Torah relates1:
”The descendants of Reuben and Gad had an abundance of livestock very numerous and they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, and behold, the place was a place for livestock.”
Our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as the twelve sons of Jacob were all shepherds. To be a shepherd is to avoid the mundane drudgeries of life. A shepherd can lie in the hills and meadows - free to appreciate the grandeur of the Creator - to meditate on the most sublime secrets of life.
This was the work of our forefathers - and the work that Reuben and Gad wanted to partake in.
They wanted to stay apart from the messiness of settling the land of Israel, of engaging in physically taxing planting, and harvesting… The move to an agricultural society would certainly put an end to the pastoral romance of being immersed in the divine.
That’s why even when Gad and Reuben were allowed to stay across the Jordan, half of the Tribe of Menashe was left with them as well - to create a bridge to their brothers and sisters in the Holy Land… and a reminder that the work of plowing and tilling, of engaging with the mundane, must still be done.2
Here we return to the question of Judaism and technology:
Judaism requires that we engage with the mundane, that we work the land and till the soil. It also requires that we engage with physical items —physical tefillin— not virtual ones, share experiences with humans in the room to form a minyan… and not a quorum in the metaverse, and connect to humans —and not AI substitutes— for our true sense of completion and fulfillment.
Jewish practice should not be informed by technological innovation. Instead Judaism should be revealing the true purpose of technology and driving innovation informed by our Judaism.
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📚 Read:
🏫 Shopify President Makes Good on 18-Year-Old Promise to His Campus Rabbi. A beautiful story about Harley Finkelstein and his investment in his Chabad Rabbi.
🔘 Wear This AI Friend Around Your Neck.
❓ What Don’t We Know? We have a lot to learn from studying our ignorance.
💬 How to Prompt a Civilization by Tech Tribe Friend David Kiferbaum
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See Two Tribes and Half of One, based on Likkutei Sichos, Vol. XXVIII