Donate

EN
/

Join our email list

What We Can All Learn From How Jewish Law Defines Personhood in A.I., Animals, and Aliens

A century of science fiction should be enough to demonstrate that we’re fascinated by the prospect of creating true artificial life.
©Stocksnapper/stock.adobe.com
©Stocksnapper/stock.adobe.com
Dr. David Zvi Kalman is a research fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center. He is a scholar, writer, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, religion, and art. In addition to his work at the Shalom Hartman Institute, he has held research and consulting roles at Sinai and Synapses and the Sapir Institute. He is the owner of Print-O-Craft Press, an independent publishing house that has released books including Jessica Deutsch’s

“Earlier this year, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine made headlines for a particularly outlandish claim: After engaging in conversation with a highly sophisticated algorithm named LaMDA, he decided that the A.I. was in fact a sentient being, and as a result it deserved legal personhood. Since Lemoine made this claim, Google has fired him, and almost everyone has concluded that he is clearly wrong, but this clearly-wrong claim nonetheless launched a barrage of articles, many with the premise “Yes, but what if he wasn’t?”

Read in complete article in Slate.

You care about Israel, peoplehood, and vibrant, ethical Jewish communities. We do too.

Join our email list for more Hartman ideas

Search
FOLLOW HARTMAN INSTITUTE
Join our email list

SEND BY EMAIL

The End of Policy Substance in Israel Politics