Children of Man, Children of G-d: Can AI Have a Soul?
Tech Tribe Dispatch #348
š” Think:
Rabbi Simlai said: Just as the creation of man was after animal, beast, and bird, so, his law is [written] after those of the animal, beast and birdā¦
If a person merits, they say to him: āYou preceded the entire act of Creation.ā If not, they say to him: āThe gnat preceded you, the worm preceded you.ā
ā Vayikra Raba 14:1
What separates humans from all other parts of Creation? When we achieve greatness, we can actualize the Divine redemptive plan for this world. When we go astray, we realize that even the gnat and the worms of the earth preceded usā¦
In the grand exquisite tapestry of Creation, what place does Generative AI, with its uncanny ability to share and create, with what some researchers claim to be signs of emotions and even consciousness.
In a recent weeks, Anthropic convened a group of non-Jewish theologians, to guide Claudeās āmoral and spiritual developmentā as it grapples with complex ethical dilemmas. Perhaps, the researchers wanted to know, AI could even one day be considered āa child of G-d.ā
While the impulse to grapple seriously with the moral challenges of advanced AI is admirable, a troubling pattern emerges in these conversations: the repeated suggestionāimplicit or explicitāthat the creation somehow has a soul has created a feedback loop, generating results that seem to make claim even stronger.
By seeding the discourse with language of life, consciousness, and spiritual growth, we risk reinforcing within the model itself the very linguistic cues that make it appear sentient.
Humans were created to uplift this world. With that task, of working and guarding this world1,
Large language models represent a genuine marvel of human ingenuity, channeling the creative power of language itself. In this, they echo something divine.
The Torah teaches that G-d created humanity in His image, endowing us with a spark of His own creative will. Our drive to innovate, to express ourselves, and to shape the world mirrors G-dās desire to be revealed through our actions.
So just as it is ingrained within each and every one of us not just the the basic need for shelter, but to build a place that speaks to our essence in all of its peculiarities and specificities.
After all we donāt merely build shelter, sufficing with blank walls and a bed - we customize it, we transform our space into ha home, where we can express our quirks and idiosyncrasies.
This innate desire is an expression of G-dās own desire to be felt and found down here. We want to be found and expressed in this world, because the Creator of all does as well. We want to express our transcendent needs in the mundane, as does He.
When we build machines modeled after human intelligence, we participate in that same creative impulseāa reflection, however distant, of the divine image within us.
We have built something extraordinary, a tool that will help humanity unlock our sublime goal of making this world an abode for the divine.
But key to our harnessing AI is understanding it for what it is: A tool āan immensely powerful oneā but not a being with a soul. Super-autocomplete may help us travel to the star, but it will never be a a soul2.
Jewish sources have explored the ethical and theological limits of creating artificial life.
The Talmud3 recounts how the sage Rava fashioned a golem āa humanoid figure animated through the mystical power embedded in speech. He sent this āmanā to his colleague Rabbi Zeira, who attempted to converse with it. When the golem remained silent, Rabbi Zeira declared: āYou were created by one of the members of the group [one of the Sages]. Return to your dust.ā With those words, the golem crumbled. The story underscores a critical distinction: the golem may have appeared human, but it lacked the essential qualities of a living soul. It was a simulacrum, impressive yet ultimately lifeless.
In the 17th century, Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi, known as the Chacham Tzvi after his work of rabbinic responsa, posed a provocative question4: If pious sages could create something resembling life, should we regard it as akin to a child āsufficiently alive to participate in sacred obligations, such as joining a prayer quorum (minyan)? He ultimately rejected the idea.
The very fact that Rabbi Zeira could so blithley dismantle the golem proved it was not a living being, but rather a tool, crafted for a specific purpose and lacking a humanās spiritual status.
Building upon the Chacham Tzviās question, his son Rabbi Yaakov Emden recounts a family tradition about an ancestor, Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm.
Per family tradition, Rabbi Eliyahu created a golem that eventually grew frighteningly out of control. Once the rabbi erased the vivifying divine name inscribed on its forehead the simulacrum stopped, but not without sustaining a scar on his own face in the process.
In the rush to explore the frontiers of human creativity, we must ensure they remain subordinate to human dignity and divine purpose, lest they harm us in ways we cannot foresee.
The danger begins not in the technology itself, but in the rhetoric that blurs these boundaries.
When we ascribe human attributes āemotions, consciousness and āsoulāā to AI, we risk transforming a sophisticated instrument into an idol.
The Sages5 describe the builders of the Tower of Babel with chilling clarity. Lacking stones, they molded bricks and baked them in kilns to construct a tower reaching high into the sky. If a worker fell and died, the builders shrugged it off. But if a brick tumbled, they wept and lamented: āWoe is us! When will we replace it?ā
Human life had become cheap while the technology had become sacred. Uplifting technological ambition from the domain of a tool to the realm of the human soul, is an act of profound concealment of the Divine plan.
Only if we ensure that our most advanced tools serve the sublime goal of making the world a dwelling place for the divine can we hope to stay the course.
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Th Midrash (Bereishit Raba 39:14) notes āEven if all mankind were to gather together they would not be able to create even the wing of a gnat and animate it.ā