AI vs Afikomen: The Medium is the Matzo
Tech Tribe Dispatch #295
💡 Think:
This Passover when you sit down at the Seder table, take a moment to ponder the Matzah in front of you. Hopefully, you’re using shmurah matzah, the delicious handmade stuff that Jews have been eating since time immemorial.
Matzah has a particular resonance as we grapple with the roll of technology in the age of AI. As we explored at last week’s First Friday shabbat meal, when the first mechanized matzah making machine was brought to Eastern Europe, both sides — those who supported it and those who wished to forbid its use- worried about its impact on the poor.
Rabbi Shlomo Kluger of Brody, who forbade it, worried about the loss of employment for the poor matzah rollers who would face job displacement by the machines.
“..it is not within the bounds of righteousness and ethics to rob the poor whose eyes look forward to this, because from this help that they provide with [making] matzot, they have great support for the abundant Passover expenses for our people.”
On the other side, his ideological opponent Rabbi Yosef Shaul Nathanson argued that using the machines would help the poor. After all, Kluger’s initial polemic on the subject was presented on a printed book. The printing press had displaced scribes, yet had made books plentiful and affordable for the masses.
As he quoted in his own polemic, the new machines would make the time consuming process of rolling matzah by hand far faster and more efficient, and as such ”…through the machine there is profit for other poor people, as they will obtain matzot cheaply.”
In an age where the AI arms race seems to think that innovation should come first, be it from the standpoint of an AI-bloom or AI-gloom, it’s critical to center the humanity at the heart of the machine.
There’s an added layer in the message of the matzah:
Today hand-made shmurah matzah is more plentiful than ever —at Tech Tribe we gave out 130 matzah kits across NYC’s tech offices— and it’s more critically centering than before. It is a truly human food. Only a person can have in mind another person - can invest the spiritual energy and critical intent. It takes out out of the machine and into the soul… It’s soul-food made by people, for people, to connect to the divine.
Chag Sameach!
🏃 DO:
🍷 Last chance to join the Seder with Tech Tribe! Join us the evenings of Saturday, April 12th and Sunday, April 13th for the first and second nights of the Seder!
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🍷 On April 20th, end the holiday of Passover with four more cups of wine, the best matzah and food, Chasidic song, great company and more. It’s the Festival of the Future.
🎬 Watch:
🎉 Mazel:
Mazel tov Michelle and Eli Rothschild on the birth of your daughter!
Mazel tov to Sarah and Sahar Masachi on the birth of their baby Omri!
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📚 Read:
📱 Can Using a Dumber Phone Cure ‘Brain Rot’?
🩺 Dr. Bernard Lown and the Rebbe's Matzah
🫓 I Kept My Freedom in Hamas’s Captivity. For 482 days I stayed on the path of faith, including a Passover celebration last year.
🔥 Lit:
This week, light Shabbat candles in NYC at 7:13 PM
For Shabbat candle-lighting time in your area click here.
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How was your Seder?