Back in the days of horse-drawn buggies and Morse code, the marvels of technology which we enjoy today would have been considered little short of a dream or the imaginings of a lunatic. Had anyone predicted such wondrous things as drones and computers and Bluetooth, they would have been either laughed out of the room or bundled off in a straitjacket. The concept of a videophone was on par with cars that can drive themselves (!), both equally improbable.
The Chofetz Chaim, stated that the changing technological landscape would make it easier for us to understand aspects of life that are hidden from us and which we can barely fathom. When we’re told, for example, that upon reaching the next world an individual will be shown a re-enactment of his whole life, we can now better grasp the concept because we’re familiar with pictures and videos in the physical arena.
Likewise, the concept of a Being capable of seeing and hearing things taking place in the remotest corners of the world slips from fantasy to reality when we find ourselves capable of similar feats, albeit in a far more limited fashion. With the scientific and technological advances of the past century, what was once pure fiction has moved most definitively into the non-fiction category. And this growth in knowledge about the world’s physical properties has the power, ironically, to enhance our belief in the metaphysical ones.
We need to remember that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not only the Creator of nature, as seen in trees and mountains and seas. He also created the nature of technology and science. Bits and bytes, microns and quarks, software and hardware: all of it falls under His Authorship. Which means that we can and should, as the Chofetz Chaim suggests, view these advances as a means of increasing our reverence for their Source.
Even as we cling to our traditions and our unalterable values, the world around us is changing at an unprecedented rate. And we have to keep up with it, both by finding our place within all that change, and by extracting the lessons that Hashem wants us to learn from it.
At a time when a general sitting at his city desk can, with the push of a button, send bomb-carrying drones to attack a target thousands of miles away, the might of my hand takes on a whole different aspect. A soldier used to have to actually lift his hand to wield sword or rifle against the enemy.
Similarly, without factory workers to man an assembly line, many products would simply not have existed.
Not so today, when machines are capable of undertaking so much of the manual labor that once fell strictly into the human domain. You don’t even have to wash your floors by hand anymore; there are affordable robots that will do the job for you. We hardly look twice when a driverless cart speeds past on its way to deliver a pizza. Yes, the physical world is indubitably changing, and at lightning speed.
And so is the world of the mind. In an era of Artificial Intelligence, when a computer can accomplish in seconds what might take a person hours or days to do—including creative work once completely out of bounds for machines—we are called upon once again to find our balance and our place within a rapidly evolving scene. It’s not always easy. Faced with the efficiency of these technological marvels, we might start wondering, uneasily, if there’s anything we can do better than a machine!
Research has shown that, for optimal functioning, AI works best when combined with human supervision. Whew! Maybe we’re not so irrelevant after all… Still, we’d like to be more than merely an adjunct to an efficient AI program. Isn’t there some area where human ability still reigns supreme?
Indeed, there is.
There’s one thing that a machine can’t do and will never be able to do. And that’s feel. A computer program may try to simulate human emotions, but it will never truly succeed.
Not even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence can experience a heart brimming with love. Even the most advanced machine can never know the joy of holding a child’s hand, or the wonder of watching the sun sink into the horizon in a panoply of blazing color. However adept a drone may be as it flies here and there to carry out its mission, the realm of human emotion is a sealed territory that it can never enter.
No device, be it ever so intricate, can overflow with heart-clenching awe when contemplating its Creator, nor fill with profound gratitude for His many salvations. Not even the savviest of computers can tell us what our human intuition tells us every day. Only the human heart is capable of relating to the world, and its Source, in such a way. A machine may speak the language of emotions, but only a being of flesh and blood can truly understand it.
As someone once said, technology answers the question, “How?” But it’s the human spirit, replete with uniquely human feelings and intuition, that experiences a yearning to seek out the answer to “Why?” The answer it finds leads to the magnificent truth of the Torah and prompts us to let our lives be guided by its wisdom.
Interestingly, in many ways Klal Yisroel has been moving toward this understanding for a while now, as feelings have come to be recognized for the enormous power they wield, for both good and for ill. The mussar movement saw it early on. The kiruv movement, which once debated prospective teshuvah candidates on purely philosophical grounds, increasingly relies these days on the human need for love, affection and encouragement to bring those candidates back to the fold.
Even as the intellectual study of Torah reaches new heights, b”H, on an almost daily basis, there’s a growing awareness of the importance of addressing the emotional realm as well. Parents and educators have been recruited into this new awareness. Feelings are no longer being ignored or set aside when it comes to producing balanced and sensitive Yidden capable of embracing Hashem’s goals for us in the best possible way.
Issues such as insecurity and low self-esteem in children, once more or less overlooked, are being recognized and attended to. Ditto for the pain inherent in marital or parent-child conflict. In fact, building and repairing every kind of human relationship depends first and foremost on an understanding of the inner life. The unseen but impactful world of emotions.
No machine can provide that. No software program can get anywhere near it. That’s because it takes one human heart to know and bring solace to another.
In our quest to figure out how to find our way through the rapidly changing world around us, let’s take comfort and strength in the fact that, while technology may have replaced human might and artificial intelligence can take on a great deal of what was once the sole domain of the human mind… As long as we have hearts that beat in solidarity with Hashem and with each other, the human spirit will always reign supreme.