ChatGPT’s questioning nature – it’s distinctly Jewish

What would the Golem, created out of clay in Prague in 1580, and ChatGPT have in common? It may not seem like much, or nothing at all. However, the deeper one delves into the workings of ChatGPT, the more one can see that it resembles Jewish thought.

This, according to journalist, author, media trainer, and early adopter of digital technology Gus Silber, is because at the heart of many Jewish traditions lies the art of not providing answers, but asking more questions.

He told Limmud Johannesburg on 17 August, “When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, not even three years ago, many people focused on its ability to provide answers. But how often does it respond to your questions with more questions? I want to learn about AI (artificial intelligence), you may ask. Well, ChatGPT will respond by asking what specific aspects of AI you want to learn about.

“We live in an age of instant answers. Google can give us 381 million search results in 0.15 seconds. Our AI chatbots, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, are capable of responding to us almost as soon as we hit send, or as soon as we finish saying what we want to say,” he said, “We’ve built a world that promises immediate, ubiquitous solutions to every question we can think of. But what if I told you that the secret to true learning, human and artificial, isn’t in the answers we receive, but in the questions we ask?”

Our modern, answer-obsessed culture has forgotten that it has been shaped by the most profound educational practices, particularly the Jewish tradition of questioning everything, Silber said.

This tradition began in 399 BCE in ancient Athens, with Socrates, who developed a reputation for approaching people who claimed to be wise and knowledgeable. Rather than learn from these people, he would often ask more questions, making that person ultimately feel that they knew nothing at the end of their conversation.

“Socrates revealed to us a fundamental truth about learning, that real understanding begins not when we have answers, but when we discover better questions,” said Silber. “So what we today call the Socratic method isn’t just a method of teaching, it’s a method of discovery.”

This tradition of considering all perspectives didn’t stay in study halls or on the pages of the Talmud, it became part of the Jewish community and how we think. “Finding balance in these arguments, holding multiple truths in tension without falling into either extreme – it’s a process as delicate and precarious as a fiddler on the roof,” said Silber.

“If you’ve ever watched ChatGPT or Claude work through a complex question, you’ll see something strikingly familiar,” Silber said. “The AI typically doesn’t spit out the definitive answer. It weighs considerations, acknowledges different perspectives, and considers multiple angles before concluding. The AI that feels most natural to us has learned to think like Tevye, carefully weighing, not rushing to judge, honouring the complexity of real questions.”

Silber said the way ChatGPT works is almost like a conversation one would have with one’s rabbi, a never-ending sequence of questions that get more specific as they move along.

“Instead of ending our curiosity with a fact, AI is extending our curiosity with a question. But the interesting thing about ChatGPT is that it’s not just capable of asking questions. It can be prompted to be very Jewish, to argue with itself,” said Silber.

AI tears apart its reasoning, offers counterarguments to its conclusions, and holds multiple truths in tension, just like Tevye. Said Silber, “This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. By training on human text that includes debate, disagreement, and self-doubt, and no doubt the technology has been trained on the problem too.”

Silber said AI systems have absorbed our capacity for cognitive dissonance. The answers that most engage us are the ones that rabbis discovered thousands of years ago – the fact that the most powerful response to a question isn’t an answer, but rather another question.

“The most Jewish thing about ChatGPT isn’t that it gives answers, it’s that it can be taught to argue with itself,” said Silber. “The answers will come, but first we have to learn to fall in love with the questions.”