AI needs guardrails. So do our communities.
A conversation with Jewish community leaders in Budapest about the journey into AI, the communities around us, and a surprisingly old instruction about safety.
In the Torah portion Lech Lecha, God tells Abraham to leave Haran and set off.
Abram - our forefather's previous branding - didn't get it straight away either. Where to? he asked the Lord of Hosts.
I'll get back to you with exact directions, the Almighty replies, I've got something on the stove, just start moving. So Abraham sets off, gathering people along the way. Before long he has a small tribe. Where are they going? Nobody knows, but at least they're going together.
We, too, are on a fast journey to an unclear destination. AI and other technologies are accelerating enormous change: social, economic, political. Unlike Abraham, though, we are making this journey rather alone. Each of us has a few mini-tribes, but at the end of the day everyone faces their own screen, their own dreams, their own children, their own bank account and their own fears. In that sense Abraham, with a donkey in the middle of the Syrian desert, may have had it easier on the road to the unknown. He had a community around him.
That is what I told 150 Jewish community leaders from Voice of the People, the initiative of the President of Israel Isaac Herzog. We met in Budapest, not far from where Herzl was born, to talk about what is on everyone's mind: the challenges AI poses to people and communities, from loneliness and job insecurity to a loss of meaning, polarisation and hatred. What does Judaism have to offer?
Quite a few threads worth pulling, and my thanks to Rabbi Ofek Meir, CEO of the Leo Baeck Education Center, who helped me find them, and to Shirel Dagan Levy, VoP CEO who organized this vibrant meeting.
For instance, did you know the Torah never compromised on safety?
Seriously. The Book of Deuteronomy says: "When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof." Got a roof or a balcony? Put up a railing! The commentators later added rules on height and strength, and even on which roofs are exempt (a sloping one that nobody stands on).
Why does this matter? Because it is exactly what is troubling the AI world right now. We have built a new house: AI engines. And it turns out people are falling off the roof because there are no railings. Guardrails. Errors, escapes, breaches. And there is no community below to catch them, because AI, screens and social networks are pulling it apart.
