Tuesday, October 21

For a while now, my siblings have been telling me to use Artificial Intelligence to make my life easier. They said, “Don’t get left behind. Don’t be like the people who don’t know how to use a computer.”  Dancing in my head were images of my Savta Rivka, an immigrant who never learned how to use a TV remote control.

So last week, in an attempt to join this century, I went on ChatGPT for the first time. Still not sure how I would use it, I created an account. I filled in my email and added a password, and then I couldn’t believe the next step. Chat GPT wanted me – are you ready for this?! – to prove that I wasn’t a robot. (You get the irony, right?! A robot was making this request!)

Listen, folks. I know the world has moved ahead and that students and professionals use Chat GPT and other AI sources to help them in a myriad of ways. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the brilliance behind it. I do. But I thought about this for a bit. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out and be part of the future (or the present). And maybe tomorrow I’ll get all kinds of emails from you readers, telling me that (a) I’m an idiot, or (b) you would like to help me understand how to use AI to my advantage.

For now, though, it’s not just that I would feel that I’m cheating if I used ChatGPT to write for me. I think I would feel as if I handed my own voice over to a very polite, very articulate stranger. There is already so much noise online. Perfectly phrased opinions, polished outrage, algorithm-approved empathy. I know. I read those posts incessantly. And you know what? I don’t want to add more words that sound smooth but feel empty.

Especially now. I scroll through the news from Israel and Gaza. Brave, beautiful Israeli soldiers are still being killed, bodies of innocent hostages are still missing, Hamas is murdering Palestinians in public, dragging their own people through the streets. Former hostages are revealing the torture and suffering they endured in captivity. Families are caught between terror, mourning, and frustration. The world does not need more automatic language. It needs real, human voices.

Technology can summarize a war in seconds, but it can’t tell you how it feels to read that another father and mother lost their child or a young wife lost her newlywed husband. I would give anything right now to have No More Reports About Terror And Death. Let there be peace already. As we enter the future, with or without ChatGPT, let us enter a future of humanity and compassion. 

Am Yisrael Chai!