Building A Community And Harnessing The Power of AI

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our Friday service on March 21st.Mishkan’s former board chair, Mark Achler, shared his considerable depth of knowledge on artificial intelligence, examining the ethics of this emerging technology from a Jewish lens. What are the positive — even lifesaving — applications of A.I.? How is A.I. already being exploited by the powerful? And is there anything we can do about it?

This Saturday, March 29th, we will gather at Mishkan HQ for an intimate morning service beginning at 9:30 am. We will have our usual children’s programming, but will not have Mishnah Study.

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/saturday-morning-shabbat-032925/

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

This week’s Parshah is all about AI — artificial intelligence. What, you don’t think they had AI when the Torah was written?

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mark Achler, one of the former board chairs of Mishkan. I’m an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author, and adjunct professor at Northwestern at the Kellogg School of Business. I’ve always been intensely interested in anticipating the future direction of Tech. Some might say the bleeding edge – and I certainly have my share of scar tissue to prove it!

Rabbi Lizzi asked if I’d share some of what I’ve learned over the past few years in my travels throughout the country. I also really want it to relate to the parsha– we’ll get there. First things first: let’s talk about embracing the uncomfortable and change. Show of hands. How many of us use AI on a regular basis, or even just every so often to do a task? How many have never tried it? How many of us fear AI? Ok, a slightly different question: Raise your hand if you’re just uncomfortable with change?  

Change is hard, I understand. 

I learned a lot of lessons from my father, of blessed memory. One of my favorite lessons was how he embraced his curiosity and leaned into learning new things. My Dad was an engineer and the prototypical nerd with a pocket protector in his shirt and a slide rule at the ready. He was horrified when calculators first appeared. If you didn’t use a slide rule, how were you really going to understand the mathematical concepts behind the numbers? Sound familiar about AI and homework today?

But with a glint in his eye and his typical bull-dog fashion, he jumped in and taught himself to program the first programmable TI calculators. He soon was writing estimating programs for engineers and within a couple of years asked me to be his partner and we opened one of the first Apple Computer retail shops in the country. He loved learning – and it opened all sorts of new opportunities for him that he never could have imagined. And for me.

Coming Together as a Collective Community.

The Parshah begins with Moses assembling the entire community of Israel. At this point the people have been in the desert for almost 5 months after leaving Egypt. They’ve been through the ordeal of the building of the Golden Calf, a rift that shook their community to its core, and required God (or the character of God, to quote Rabbi Lizzi) to give the people a concrete project to work on – to not only keep them busy, but to keep them focused on their shared values. Moses emphasizes the importance of keeping the Sabbath and then calls for contributions of materials and skills to build the Mishkan, or Tabernacle. The people respond with overwhelming generosity, each contributing what they can, from donating half a shekel each, to giving precious metals to skilled labor, and they construct a home worthy of the Divine. This collective effort underscores a timeless truth: when a community – even one that includes disagreements about big topics and even historical rifts – when that community unites with a shared purpose it can achieve extraordinary things.

In this political moment for a community like ours, it might be hard to feel like our actions matter, whether as individuals or as a collective. The powers that be are acting at such a rapid pace that we can’t keep up, let alone counteract the undoing of so many dimensions of our country we’ve come to take for granted. Back in 2016, when Trump first started making executive orders targeting different minority groups, me and my wife Marcie joined a group of Mishkanites who helped resettle a Syrian family who were fleeing the Assad regime. Nine years later, they are all citizens of this country, deeply grateful to the Jews who worked together to help them make their homes here. Our lives are far deeper and richer through our friendship with them. Margaret Mead said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world – indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” So even in a moment like this where we might be led to feel despair, it’s that much more important to lean into community, and to remember what we can both get and give as an active member of a community. 

We are in a bi-polar world where many leaders try to heighten our passions with fear. And there is a lot to be worried about. But at Mishkan we prefer to lead with hope, optimism and joy. That is part of what makes this community so special. We need one another. Today, more than ever.

Using the Community’s Tools to Build the Tabernacle

So let’s talk about the topic at hand: Artificial Intelligence. A major theme of Vayak’hel is the use of tools and skills within the community to construct the Tabernacle. In today’s world, one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal is Artificial Intelligence. But what exactly is AI? What do you think? Should we ignore it? be afraid of it? or embrace? Or all three? I’ll try to speak to all of the above.

Full transparency, the way I described Mishkan earlier – with optimism and joy… that tends to be me, and how I approach the conversation about AI, too: with interest, curiosity enthusiasm, and caution, in that order. I’ll tell you why, and I’ll also say, we’re still at the very beginnings of our collective experiences with AI. It’s not only early but the pace of change is staggering. I don’t think we have ever experienced anything like this adoption curve of weeks instead of years and decades.  There’s much we don’t know and much to be cautious about. I want to start with why I think it’s exciting.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and learn like humans. These systems can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. AI encompasses various technologies, including machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics.

As an Adjunct Professor at Kellogg, last year there was a call out for ideas for a Levy Inspiration Trek to take students to an area of interest. I came up with the idea of doing a trip to San Francisco on all things AI. We had 12 spots and over 120 students applied! It was such an incredible trip. We spent 3 full days completely immersed in all things AI. We met with the Chief Legal Counsel for Open AI. The head of cyber security for Google. The head of reporting on AI for the Wall Street Journal. Some of the top VC’s who invest in the leading AI companies and over two dozen entrepreneurs building the latest AI companies. Mind blown! It was a dream trip and opportunity, and they actually paid me to do it. So what did we learn…?

Examples of What AI Can Do

AI has the potential to revolutionize numerous aspects of our lives. Here are a few examples of its capabilities:

• Healthcare: AI can analyze medical data to diagnose diseases, predict patient outcomes, and recommend personalized treatment plans. It can also assist in medical imaging and robotic surgery. We heard an interesting study that compared the diagnosis rates of 1) a human doctor 2) a human doctor paired with AI, and 3) just the AI.  The human doctor was right 73% of the time. The human doctor paired with the AI was right 75% of the time. And the AI was right 92% of the time. Doesn’t make sense. When the doctor was paired with the AI, the human bias for being right was so strong that the human overrode the AI and went with their own judgment, reducing their accuracy in diagnosing.
• Education: AI-powered tools can provide personalized learning experiences, adapt to individual student needs, and offer instant feedback – and it never gets tired, frustrated or bored. They can also automate administrative tasks, allowing educators to focus more on teaching.
• Transportation: Self-driving cars, powered by AI, have the potential to reduce traffic accidents and improve mobility for those who cannot drive. AI can also optimize public transportation systems and manage traffic flow in cities. When we were in San Francisco, we took Waymo’s. It was so cool – and a little unnerving. 
• Customer Service: AI chatbots can handle customer inquiries, provide support, and improve overall customer satisfaction. They can operate 24/7 and handle multiple queries simultaneously and in multiple languages seamlessly.
• Environmental Sustainability: AI can help monitor and manage natural resources, optimize energy usage, and predict environmental changes. It can also aid in the development of sustainable technologies.

By integrating AI into our communities, we can harness its potential to enhance our collective efforts and achieve goals that were once unimaginable. 

Let me give you a real example from the business world. A company was launching a new product to sell into large corporations. They wanted to reach out to all the Executives at each Fortune 500 Company. They asked AI to find the name, title and contact information for every executive in every Fortune 500 company. Gave the command and it was done. Then to comb through each person and see what articles or social media posts they have made in the past year. Another command and done. Then to craft a personalized email to each person that talks about what that person cares most about, reference their posts and tie it to the company’s new product launch. Whole process done in minutes – with significantly better results. Can you imagine how long that would have taken multiple human beings to do?

How might we use these tools in ways in which we could build stronger ties of connection between us? How could we use this to proactively reach outside of our community to find allies, help and coalitions of support? The truth is that it is almost impossible to predict the future. Just think of a landline rotary phone, to a simple cell phone, to what we have today. Impossible to conceive. Impossible to ignore. And full of extreme benefits and equally extreme problems. Screen addiction and poor social skills anyone?

Is AI something to be embraced or feared? The answer is yes. Both. AI is a tool. Just like a hammer. A hammer can be used to build something amazing… like a tabernacle. And it can be used to kill. Another example of a tool is Social Media. It can be used to foster connections, and it can be used to sow fear and distrust and topple governments. Personally, I got off all Social Media in 2018. It’s true I do miss seeing pics of your latest dinner… but I feel that the current owners of our major Social Media tools are managing it irresponsibly. So much so that I didn’t want to support or be associated with it. Like all tools we need to understand it to be able to manage it better. 

Look, AI will save lives and do heroic things, in healthcare, like creating personalized drugs down to your individual DNA. And… it is a minefield of ethical questions. For example:

1. Can the AI ingest copyrighted materials without permission? Personally I don’t believe that is right – intellectual property laws need to be enforced. 
2. The environmental impact that powering all these computers will have on our environment? Have you been reading about the rush back to nuclear – large tech companies like Microsoft are now building their own smaller nuclear reactors because to power AI requires immense amounts of energy. 
3. Drone warfare! Did you read this week in Ukraine there was a battle fought by the Ukrainians entirely by Drones. This is real science fiction come to life – and some seriously scary stuff – with deep implications for our future. In some ways it feels like the beginning of World War I when some armies were fighting with cavalry up against tanks and machine guns.
4. What about fake videos that only an expert can tell were AI generated and not the real person. The potential for damage is real.

These are not hypothetical scenarios. All of this is happening today – and at breakneck speed.

Should we let Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have free rein and control our destinies without any government oversight? Don’t even get me started about Elon’s role in Government as an un-elected official.  How can we trust those who significantly profit from excess to police themselves? Hey we live in Chicago, we’ve read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, we know what happens when unsupervised greed is left unchecked. Why in the world would we imagine that this technology will be stewarded responsibly by those in power and who benefit the most from it?

The post World War II Golden Age of Judaism is rapidly evolving and changing from right underneath us. The rules of how we govern ourselves are changing as we speak. Twenty years ago could you imagine that every Jewish gathering would need to be protected by armed guards? Tonight’s Parshah written millennia ago rings as true tonight as when it was first received – that we live in a perilous and ever-changing world and that we are always stronger together and capable of doing incredible things as one people. AI is here whether we like it or not. It will be increasingly woven into the fabric of our lives. I would urge us to be both open to the benefits and utilize it creatively, all the while remaining vigilant in understanding its potential impact and the importance of both business and government accountability and oversight. What does oversight mean? Honestly I don’t know. But I sure wouldn’t want to eat a hot dog from the turn of the 20th century. I wish I could give you more than “stay vigilant”. Demand more from your politicians. Form advocacy groups. Make your voice heard.

My Father infused in me a sense of curiosity, hope and the willingness to experiment. I am optimistic by nature. As we navigate the challenges and opportunities of the modern age, let us remember the lessons of our ancestors and strive to build communities that are united – for all the collective impact we can make – innovative, because Jews have always embraced new frontiers – compassionate, because Jewish communities orient ourselves around taking care of people – and joyful, because hey life is hard and it’s essential to find those delicious nuggets of joy – especially in these days!

Shabbat Shalom.