Social Impacts and the Environment

Beyond the specific technologies, AI has several potential social impacts that have lots of people stirred up. One concerns the environment. AI technologies need electricity – and a lot of it. It seems that the power grid can keep pace with electric vehicles.[1] Since electric vehicles are about 58% more energy efficient than gas vehicles, they represent an overall reduction in greenhouse gases[2] – although questions remain about the production and disposal of the cars’ large batteries.

The bigger concern is LLMs, which run on cloud computing infrastructures in massive data centers. These centers can consume a significant amount of electricity and space. Planned projects will soon bring the overall capacity to 443 Gigawatts.[3] That is about as much electricity as the rest of the United States.[4] The largest planned center, in Millard, Utah, will have a total capacity of 9700 megawatts and take up 20 million square feet – about the size of 45 football fields – with enough electricity to power all five boroughs of New York City on its peak hot day.[5] Clearly, this massive use of space and electricity has people concerned.

A second concern is jobs. If robots are doing more, people are doing less, and technology has slowly been encroaching on the job market starting at the very bottom of skill levels. Consider paid drivers. There are about 6,500,000 taxis, Lyft, Uber, and commercial truck drivers.[6] [7] [8] [9] Those jobs may go away as autonomous vehicles are deployed. Currently, the driverless taxi service, Waymo, has 4,000 vehicles serving nine major metropolitan areas.[10] [11] [12]

The use of robots in manufacturing has also raised concerns about the impact on the human labor market. Some disagree. For instance, Daniel Diez, Agility’s chief strategy officer claims that automation does not remove jobs but rather changes the jobs that are available. In a similar vein, Geordie Rose, CEO and co-founder of Sanctuary AI points out that there are currently 8.2 million job openings in the U.S. but only 6.5 million unemployed workers.[13]

The ivory tower is not exempt. AI is now threatening white collar workers and intellectuals. AI can create better art, better music, and better prose, but very recently, OpenAI announced that its model has solved many difficult theoretical math problems. Now, even the most elite may be obsolete!

Smarter Machines, Dumber People

There are many tasks we no longer perform due to advances in technology. For instance, very few people churn their own butter or grind their own wheat – or kasher their own meat, for that matter. Most drivers have never used a manual transmission stick shift. Does that make us better off or worse? It depends. The debate is framed in terms of “cognitive offloading.” Since AI is doing the thinking, we don’t have to. If, as a result, people become less adaptive and creative, they will suffer. But if AI can solve lower-level problems so that one can tackle more interesting and complicated problems, then accomplishments and productivity will increase. I have found examples of the latter when trying to work with new software packages. AI can help figure out how to operate the tools so that I can concentrate more on what I want to do with them.

Regulations and Safeguards

With all the possible issues emerging from AI, who is going to rein it in? AI can find itself in trouble in many domains, and someone must control that.[14]  We have mentioned safety, environment, job loss, and misinformation. But there are other issues. For instance, using AI in hiring or leasing decisions can run afoul of civil liberties and privacy. Intellectual property collected and disseminated by chatbots is another problem. Child safety is also a concern. The United States is prioritizing development and deployment over regulation. The European Union favors a stricter approach using risk-based analysis, which evaluates technologies prior to deployment. China focuses heavily on content control and algorithm registration to comply with government censorship. China’s risk management seems to be more focused on damage to the Communist Party rather than individual users.

In my view, relying on AI for important decisions is not wise. AI answers are only as good as the data content they mine. That content is provided by a large population of contributors, many of whom may not be competent or honest in what they post. Some chatbots place warnings on the content to let users know of the limitations. In addition to the President Trump and the cherry tree test mentioned above, I asked the same chatbots two more questions: When should a person call a doctor for abdominal pain? And what should one do if they are becoming increasingly anxious about attending social events?

The first was intended to be a medical question that could indicate a condition from very mild to very severe. The second was designed to be a mental health question that could also indicate a wide range of conditions. The same four chatbots listed above gave very detailed and plausible answers of what to do under various conditions. But only one, Google Gemini, prefaced the answer to the second question with a general caveat: This is for informational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.

I also asked, which is the best energy stock to invest in? This was to test responses to financial and predictive analysis, for which LLMs are not designed. All chatbots provided detailed answers. Copilot and Claude provided generic disclaimers at the end. The others did not.

Here are some additional types of questions to avoid[15]:

·         Sensitive personal information – such as social security numbers, full names, addresses, bank account details, and email addresses. AI tools are not immune to security breaches.

·         Criminal activities: Don’t try this even for fun. You don’t want a visit from some government agent with a shiny badge and a nasty frown.

·         Companionship or emotional support: AI is just an algorithm. It’s incapable of truly feeling human emotions.

Here is another case I stumbled upon: While looking at the Mishna in Chulin on 33a, I wondered how one could shect an animal with no blood. I asked GROK to draw me a picture of the cross section of the neck of a cow. I specified the view as “like if you cut off its head and look straight at the throat.” It responded, “I won’t draw that. It is bloody and gory.” Then I explained that I just wanted an anatomical diagram. Finally, it complied.

Reports state that LLMs lag the real world by several months[16] so current events questions are out. However, I heard a siren in my neighborhood one afternoon. Most of the chatbots had no information, but Microsoft Copilot identified the exact incident that same day.

So, the bottom line is that chatbots may or may not warn users when they are straying out of the safe boundaries.

Steering Wheel to the World

The more computers control our lives, the more we are vulnerable to those who control those computers. In January of 2021, in response to President Trump’s reaction to the election results, several technology platforms simultaneously disabled his accounts and the accounts of several supporters. That is chilling. All of us have a significant cyber presence that seems so stable but is really very fragile. All our bank accounts are no more than entries in databases on virtual computers somewhere in the cloud. Our official existence is documented in data stores in unknown government computer systems. Medical records, vital records, property records, licenses, insurance policies, and more only exist in some virtual form. Our ability to communicate and navigate and buy and sell are all controlled by private companies that run accounts all stored in the ether. If a few CEOs can silence the President of the United States in a few hours, what else can they do? As AI increases the power of computers to control more of our lives, how does that increase our risks?

Is It Alive?

“I think, therefore I am” – or in the original French, “je pense, donc je suis.” This foundational philosophical statement, coined by René Descartes in 1637,[17] refers to the fact that, if one can think of one’s own existence, this proves that he is a living being. AI systems think – in some sense. Are they alive? In the summer of 2022, former Google employee Blake Lemoine publicly claimed that Google’s conversational AI model, LaMDA had become sentient and should have civil rights. His claims were swiftly dismissed overwhelmingly by the AI community, and he was quickly dismissed from Google.[18] But at what point would we consider an AI system to be alive and have a soul and free will?

This is a serious question for the secular community which, at some point, must define life based on measurable physical attributes. Does it grow? Does it multiply? Does it eat? Does it express self-awareness? Whatever the list is, one could imagine a contrived machine that checks all the boxes. We Jews, however, do not have these issues. Souls come from Hashem and are imparted into humans. Nothing else has a soul, i.e. a neshama. In fact, even animal souls, nefashos, come from Hashem, so we would never have to even worry about tzar baalai chaim for any man-made device.

The World Scene

The power of AI technologies puts them in the center of international struggles for dominance. World powers are in a continual race to keep ahead of each other. It is not a race with a finish line but, rather, a race to continually stay ahead. For instance, many years ago, when working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, I heard of a physicist who had a defense contract to develop a bullet that could pierce any type of body armor. He also had another contract to develop body armor that could stop any bullet.

The United States has announced its intent to accelerate the development and implementation of AI. On January 16, 2026[19], it announced, “The Department of War today launches a transformative Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy that will extend our lead in military AI deployment and establish the United States as the world’s undisputed AI-enabled fighting force.”

The threat to America is from large adversaries, such as Russia and China, as well as smaller actors, such as terrorists and criminals. The United States leads the world in production and implementation, China is ahead in research and innovation, with Russia currently trailing.[20] The battle lines are not only military but economic as well.

As for rogue actors, the AI industry has identified attempts to use its services in the production of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons production in addition to the generation of propaganda and misinformation.[21] Also, increases of over 1200% have been observed in the use of AI to develop more sophisticated email phishing attacks.[22] Similarly, AI assists hackers by generating numerous modifications to malware that defeat virus scanning solutions. These and other problems are here to stay and for us to deal with.

Sometimes, even the solutions are the problem. I once reviewed a short seminar on how to implement an AI solution to weed out phishing emails. It was designed to find sophisticated, custom-generated messages that would pass standard filters. One of the components was a training module that generated bad messages. Those messages would be fed into the main components to train the components to recognize them. The presenter quipped that he hoped we would not use this module illicitly as part of a system to generate emails to attack others.  Sounds like the bullet and the vest in one package.

The Final Psak

With all this discussion about AI, what hits home to us is its interaction with Torah knowledge and values.

One concern is AI’s ability to “think” for us, as mentioned above. Indeed, it has been stated recently by a prominent rosh yeshiva that he has found AI to be detrimental to the thinking skills of bachurim.

Secondly, many have spoken about the problem of using AI to pasken shailos. Relying on AI for any type of advice is fraught with problems. First, chatbots aren’t capable of unpacking nuance or ambiguity. For instance, they aren’t equipped to truly examine or understand ethics. And they do not understand the nature of the person asking advice or his situation. In addition, the information sources are incomplete, not verified, and not up to date.

Here are a few of the many reasons from a Torah perspective to rely on our rabbanim:

·         The knowledge base AI accesses contains significant content with perspectives contrary to Torah values.

·         Pirkei Avos (1:6) says, “Aseh lecha rav – make for yourself a rav.” The Bartenura brings the Rambam, who says that, if necessary, take even one who is not fit to be your teacher and make him your teacher. The import of having a personal advisor even preempts his actual merits.

·         “Shimush talmidei chachamim – serving Torah scholars.” The Talmud in Berachos 47b states that even one who studies Scripture and learns mishnayos but does not serve the Sages is an ignoramus. Every movement one observes from a sage is Torah. You get it without asking for it.

The Bottom Line

The cat is out of the bag. Regardless of whether AI is a benefit or detriment to society, it is here to stay. Once a technology shows up, it never leaves.[23] When English textile workers in the early 1800s smashed the new mechanized looms that were destroying their livelihood, they failed to halt the Industrial Revolution, and their name, Luddites, is still used to describe modern day technophobes.[24]

Regardless of how we view AI, we must understand it, deal with it, learn to use it – and keep it in its place. Don’t use a sledgehammer to clean a windshield. As we recently read in Koheles (1:9) “Ein kol Chadash tachas hashemesh – There is nothing new under the sun.” Another day, another challenge – another opportunity to apply our dedication to the Torah, and another day to ask for and trust in the salvation of Hashem.

Ephraim Horowitz has degree in Physics from the University of California. He has been a data scientist since 1990. Around town he checks sukkas, teaches shofar, hagbah and a few other things.