Can religion save us from Artificial Intelligence?

Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons — other times, not so much. It was on one of those not-so-much days on a cold afternoon in late December that the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons decided to turn to Artificial Intelligence.

Franklin, 38, who has dark wavy hair and a friendly vibe, knew that OpenAI’s new ChatGPT program could write sonnets in the style of Shakespeare and songs in the style of Taylor Swift. Now, he wondered if it could write a sermon in the style of a rabbi.

So he gave it a prompt: “Write a sermon, in the voice of a rabbi, about 1,000 words, connecting the Torah portion this week with the idea of intimacy and vulnerability, quoting Brené Brown” — the bestselling author and researcher known for her work on vulnerability, shame and empathy.

The result, which he shared that evening in the synagogue’s modern, blond wood sanctuary and later posted on Vimeo, was a coherent, if repetitive talk that many in his congregation guessed had been crafted by famous rabbis.

“You’re clapping,” Franklin said after revealing that the sermon he’d just delivered was composed by a computer. “I’m terrified.”

As experiments like Franklin’s and the recent unsettling conversation between a tech columnist and Microsoft’s new chatbot demonstrate just how eerily human-like some AI programs have become, religious thinkers and institutions are increasingly wading into the conversation around the ethical uses of a rapidly expanding technology that might one day develop a consciousness of its own — at least according to its Silicon Valley apostles. Calling upon a wide range of myths from Icarus to the Tower of Babel to the tale of the genie who can grant all our wishes with disastrous results, they are sounding an ancient warning about what happens when humans try to play God.

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