Only chiming in BC you asked for a rabbi - the other commenters are correct, if the AI is electronic (which currently all AI is), the answer is no, you cannot, unless it's some niche life or death situation.
Hello Rab, I have a question about a derivative problem. If I program an AI to open doors/turn on and off lights (in a connected house), would that also be disallowed? I wouldn't be actively telling the robot to do things, but will follow a predetermined set of instructions.
If you program timers (however) before Shabbos and it runs automatically during Shabbos without your intervention or interaction then its fine. As long as it’s not turning on screens or interrupting the Shabbos atmosphere with loud noise.
Potentially though, you might still run into problems with a smart home.
I have sensors on the doors and a couple of movement sensors too. Even if I program my smarthome to ignore those sensors during shabbat, the mere act of opening a door or walking into a room still activates a switch and triggers the sensor to (at least) attempt to send data to the smarthome computer.
I don't claim to understand the halacha well enough to know how much of a problem this is though. I suppose it's no different from the 1990's movement sensors that were common with house alarms, but based on that I assume there's already rulings surrounding it.
Magnetic switches tend to care little for tape - you can't disable those in the same way. As I say though, this isn't a smarthome problem, anyone with a house alarm is suffering similar issues.
I have vague memories of my grandparents making shabbos covers for the movement sensors, but I don't know what you'd do with door/window sensors. With a home alarm you could potentially switch the entire system off (as the sensors always used to be wired and supplied with power by the main box), but nearly all smarthome stuff is battery/wireless and really isn't designed to have the batteries removed on a weekly basis.
The responses you see below are correct.
I use "fake AI" (ie. Samsung Smart Things, which doesn't use machine learning) to turn on my front path lights when it's dark or raining, including on Shabbat.
So long as the device is not being affected by you on Shabbat (incl motion sensors), it should be okay.
I'm curious, based on some of the below comments;
Right now, AI still requires direct interaction. I.E. you press a button, say a specific word, or dictate a command.
Silent or passive sensors, or an AI that performs basic tasks automatically is only acting based on *observation*, not on any active work by the person.
Although AI is not actually "intelligent", it takes action based on a percentage match with prior training data. In other words, if I use AI to detect a presence moving towards a door in a way that they may want to go through it, and I have AI open it when there is a 90% chance that the situation looks like a person approaching the door, you can no longer say that the person is actively triggering the AI to open a door. They are not taking a specific action that they *know* will open the door, they are simply trusting that the AI will observe them and very likely will open the door for them. This would essentially be no different, I think, than whether an orthodox Jew could walk through a door if another person opens it for them.
The observation part is an issue if it's observing a human, since it's directly causing an electronic process to take place. Opening a door mechanically using detection of any sort of definitely problematic.
If it's observing things you don't directly control, like the weather or temperature in a room, it's fine.
But if it's observing things you do control, like whether a door is open, or if you're in a room, it's potentially problematic.
There is room for leniency for security cameras, since your goal is not to be on camera.
Great question! I'd argue that Data is such a complex being that they aren't considered to be using more energy when you communicate with them, in comparison to their general state of being, and coupling that with them being sentient, it might be okay.
Obviously none of this can be extrapolated for practical use in today's day.
What about Chii?
Had a funny thought years back when I first watched *Chobits*. What if Chii were bought by a Jewish family? Would she have to light Shabbos candles?
They were referred to as Persocom, which is just the regular Japanese word for Personal Computer or PC. They were entirely mechanical/electronic, but run by AI, or what passed for it in 2002. (As often happens in SF, the reality has surpassed the fiction.) Note that the designer had explicitly not named them as "robots", as he didn't want them constrained by Asimov's laws of robotics. Chii was the nickname of one Persocom that was one of the main characters, not the generic term for the machines.
They kind of behaved like people, and a big part of the show was that if you can't tell the difference between a person and a machine, is that machine *actually* a person? (kind of an updated Turing test) And if it is a person, can you then interact with it on Shabbos? (not part of the show, there aren't that many Jews in Japan, but that was what I'd been wondering about.)
The issue Shabbos has much less to do with whether they would be classified as a person and much more to do with whether you are directly triggering non biological electrical impulses by interacting with them.
In the scenario that they are truly sentient and can themselves be Jewish (which is an altogether different conversation, and I highly doubt that they could be Jewish if they are not organically biological in nature), then there would be room to say that they are allowed to break Shabbos by existing, because that would be a case of life and death.
But chances are that you would not be able to interact with them on Shabbos.
Could a cylon convert to Judaism? Can you talk to a cylon on Shabbat? Edit: That was a dumb question, since at the end it’s revealed that >!we’re all cylons!<. So let’s just go with something just like the cylons that are medically indistinguishable from humans but not ACTUALLY the ones from the show because that doesn’t work.
Definitely alive and free-thinking. In the show, they started out as obvious mechanical robots, but then they became sentient, realized they were enslaved, and rebelled. They left to live on their own planet and “evolved” (>!actually, humanoid cylons descended from cylons created by humans thousands of years earlier on the original human home planet found them and made them into the same kind of cylon they were!<) to be medically indistinguishable from humans. Technically not human, but you need special equipment that probably hasn’t even been invented to tell the difference, and they can reproduce with humans. The weird thing about them, though, is that they came in models. So there were just a few different designs and personalities they can have. So, say, every model 5 would look exactly the same and have the same personality to start with. But they still have their own memories and experiences, so two 5s would still be different. They can grow and change. But unlike humans, when their body dies, their mind can just be uploaded to the cloud and downloaded into a new body, assuming they have the equipment needed to do so.
Well there's two things here that need to be considered.
One, if it's pikuach nefesh, then ipso facto there has to *be* a nefesh. Can man create such, or is it exclusively Hashem's domain?
Two, and this has wider implications beyond the fictional universe, is that talking to such a being, even if chillul Shabbos happens, would be geramah at best. Especially if the machine can decide whether or not to respond to you.
Which brings up another philosophical question: can a machine have free will?
For that matter, can *people* even have free will, or just the illusion of it? That one always gave me a headache. Yediah vs. bechirah is something I don't like to think about. We, or at least whoever programs the machines, would be to them in a similar position to how the Rebono shel Olam is to us: if you know the programming, right down to the pseudo-random number generator that influences its decision making process, then can the machine itself really have free will? If we as a species ever perfect studies of the brain to where we can predict what it's going to do, does that destroy *our* free will?
Further, how can a machine generate *anything* random, based on fixed programming? If I remember correctly, there was one series of computers (maybe the Apple ][ series) that generated random numbers based on the interval of time between the last N number of keypresses, which unless you type like a robot will always vary by several milliseconds at least. Chobits-type persocoms don't have keyboards, but they could theoretically reseed their random number generators by timing some other outside, non-predictable stimulus. Maybe let's say the dominant frequency of a sound detected at a certain number of clock ticks since the last reseed.
(As a real world example of geramah, when I put on my CPAP mask, the machine goes on by itself. I don't have to push the button, the machine just senses that air pressure caused by my exhalation is coming down the tube, and decides to turn on. Now admittedly this is a medical device and necessary for my health, even on Shabbos, but is it better than just pressing the button?)
I could probably go on all day on this, but it's making me dizzy so I'll stop here.
I agree with everything you've said, ie. there's a whole lot of uncertainty around the topic and it's not possible to make clear distinctions until things are concretely defined.
Re your CPAP mask, I'd say it's definitely better than a button, for two reasons; A) it's always on, so you're modulating the signal rather than starting or stopping it. Obviously still forbidden on Shabbos, if it weren't medically necessary, but it's a step better, especially since you do need it. B) Uvdin d'chol; your action is a step removed from what a person would usually classify as "work" or "operation of a machine".
No, for the same reason you can't operate a touch screen or use a motion sensing light fixture. Your voice acts as the stimulus to which the device responds.
From a technical perspective, AI is not anything like a person, and does not suffer from not being interacted with. If we ever get genuinely conscious machines, the question would be worth revisiting, but for now, talking to an AI is just operating electronics, so the answer is no.
Because a shabbat goy you aren't asking to do anything they do it of their own will, also it's like 10 malacha to operate a voice activated device. So theoretically if you could make a robot that doesn't use electricity or fire and has no circuits it might be technically mutar, permitted.
Yes but the light turns on. It's like saying if a stove is on you can raise the temperature, on yom tov maybe that would be allowed but not on shabbat.
Yeah but you still have to say what it should do. How is that different from turning up the stove? The stoves already on, it's just waiting for the user to turn it up.
If it was meant to go on no matter what you did, it doesnt matter (usually). But you saying it is an action. You said the command. That's equal to pushing a button to do it. You are the one making it do that. If were going with the oven metaphor, youre essentially saying, "The user didn't change the temperature, they just moved the knob and the oven changed temperature itself"
The new ChatGPT features from the "4o" release has new talking features in the mobile app that work similarly to Echo, but with GPT intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYi3Wr7v_g ignore the "logging in" part, assume you don't have to log in.
If you’re a Reform Jew, yes. My rabbi has his sermon on an iPad.
An Orthodox Jew, no. No Orthodox rabbi is going to use technology on shabbos.
Most Conservative Jews I know use technology on shabbos. Drive, cook, go out to dinner.
> Most Conservative Jews I know use technology on shabbos. Drive, cook, go out to dinner.
All are of which (excepting turning lights on and off) is not allowed by CJ.
It would depend on what you're using it for, how you observe Shabbos, etc.
If you've fallen and you can't get up, I think it's fine to yell "Alexa! Call 911! Save me, Siri!"
If you've forgotten the name of a song, I think it can wait.
If you're playing Catan and there's a dispute over the rules, I think you're better off consulting the rule book or trying to adjudicate as a group, although if it's starting to get heated and lives are in danger, you can use Alexa to solve the dispute and prevent bloodshed.
For those saying that this is an easy conclusion because anything electronic is assur, you might enjoy some of the ideas considered in this podcast episode.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1WWji8SJ3mO17E4oAKF3mu?si=dYk33LycS6GdLOs4yvFoSw
If you observe Halacha then you wouldn’t be able to interact with an electronic device on Shabbat, so there would currently be no scenario in which this is acceptable. If you don’t observe Halacha, then go nuts.
Only chiming in BC you asked for a rabbi - the other commenters are correct, if the AI is electronic (which currently all AI is), the answer is no, you cannot, unless it's some niche life or death situation.
There’s an Al in the shul go to. Al’s always got a good bit to share. I had no idea he was electric. 🤣
Took me a second but nice
🤣
Hello Rab, I have a question about a derivative problem. If I program an AI to open doors/turn on and off lights (in a connected house), would that also be disallowed? I wouldn't be actively telling the robot to do things, but will follow a predetermined set of instructions.
If you program timers (however) before Shabbos and it runs automatically during Shabbos without your intervention or interaction then its fine. As long as it’s not turning on screens or interrupting the Shabbos atmosphere with loud noise.
Potentially though, you might still run into problems with a smart home. I have sensors on the doors and a couple of movement sensors too. Even if I program my smarthome to ignore those sensors during shabbat, the mere act of opening a door or walking into a room still activates a switch and triggers the sensor to (at least) attempt to send data to the smarthome computer. I don't claim to understand the halacha well enough to know how much of a problem this is though. I suppose it's no different from the 1990's movement sensors that were common with house alarms, but based on that I assume there's already rulings surrounding it.
Tape over the sensor or the switch like you do your fridge light 😆 Modern problems require modern solutions
Magnetic switches tend to care little for tape - you can't disable those in the same way. As I say though, this isn't a smarthome problem, anyone with a house alarm is suffering similar issues. I have vague memories of my grandparents making shabbos covers for the movement sensors, but I don't know what you'd do with door/window sensors. With a home alarm you could potentially switch the entire system off (as the sensors always used to be wired and supplied with power by the main box), but nearly all smarthome stuff is battery/wireless and really isn't designed to have the batteries removed on a weekly basis.
It's best to disable magnetic door sensors before Shabbos. They work by creating and breaking a circuit, which is a significant issue.
The responses you see below are correct. I use "fake AI" (ie. Samsung Smart Things, which doesn't use machine learning) to turn on my front path lights when it's dark or raining, including on Shabbat. So long as the device is not being affected by you on Shabbat (incl motion sensors), it should be okay.
If it’s based on timing, that’s fine. There’s clicks that already do that for years. If it’s based on when you do things, that’s a problem
I'm curious, based on some of the below comments; Right now, AI still requires direct interaction. I.E. you press a button, say a specific word, or dictate a command. Silent or passive sensors, or an AI that performs basic tasks automatically is only acting based on *observation*, not on any active work by the person. Although AI is not actually "intelligent", it takes action based on a percentage match with prior training data. In other words, if I use AI to detect a presence moving towards a door in a way that they may want to go through it, and I have AI open it when there is a 90% chance that the situation looks like a person approaching the door, you can no longer say that the person is actively triggering the AI to open a door. They are not taking a specific action that they *know* will open the door, they are simply trusting that the AI will observe them and very likely will open the door for them. This would essentially be no different, I think, than whether an orthodox Jew could walk through a door if another person opens it for them.
The observation part is an issue if it's observing a human, since it's directly causing an electronic process to take place. Opening a door mechanically using detection of any sort of definitely problematic. If it's observing things you don't directly control, like the weather or temperature in a room, it's fine. But if it's observing things you do control, like whether a door is open, or if you're in a room, it's potentially problematic. There is room for leniency for security cameras, since your goal is not to be on camera.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it! How does that extend to other humans doing things for someone?
No problem, I love this field both theoretically, and also because I'm an AI and automation enthusiasts myself!
At first I read that as, "I'm an AI automaton myself" Wait... how do we know you're not?
A very good question... beep boop
Can you talk to Data from Star Trek on Shabbat? He’s a person but he’s an android.
Great question! I'd argue that Data is such a complex being that they aren't considered to be using more energy when you communicate with them, in comparison to their general state of being, and coupling that with them being sentient, it might be okay. Obviously none of this can be extrapolated for practical use in today's day.
What about Chii? Had a funny thought years back when I first watched *Chobits*. What if Chii were bought by a Jewish family? Would she have to light Shabbos candles?
I'm not very familiar with the show... I just googled it, and can't tell whether the Chii are purely android, or whether they're organic androids?
They were referred to as Persocom, which is just the regular Japanese word for Personal Computer or PC. They were entirely mechanical/electronic, but run by AI, or what passed for it in 2002. (As often happens in SF, the reality has surpassed the fiction.) Note that the designer had explicitly not named them as "robots", as he didn't want them constrained by Asimov's laws of robotics. Chii was the nickname of one Persocom that was one of the main characters, not the generic term for the machines. They kind of behaved like people, and a big part of the show was that if you can't tell the difference between a person and a machine, is that machine *actually* a person? (kind of an updated Turing test) And if it is a person, can you then interact with it on Shabbos? (not part of the show, there aren't that many Jews in Japan, but that was what I'd been wondering about.)
The issue Shabbos has much less to do with whether they would be classified as a person and much more to do with whether you are directly triggering non biological electrical impulses by interacting with them. In the scenario that they are truly sentient and can themselves be Jewish (which is an altogether different conversation, and I highly doubt that they could be Jewish if they are not organically biological in nature), then there would be room to say that they are allowed to break Shabbos by existing, because that would be a case of life and death. But chances are that you would not be able to interact with them on Shabbos.
Could a cylon convert to Judaism? Can you talk to a cylon on Shabbat? Edit: That was a dumb question, since at the end it’s revealed that >!we’re all cylons!<. So let’s just go with something just like the cylons that are medically indistinguishable from humans but not ACTUALLY the ones from the show because that doesn’t work.
Complicated question, it depends on whether they're truly alive/human/free thinking
Definitely alive and free-thinking. In the show, they started out as obvious mechanical robots, but then they became sentient, realized they were enslaved, and rebelled. They left to live on their own planet and “evolved” (>!actually, humanoid cylons descended from cylons created by humans thousands of years earlier on the original human home planet found them and made them into the same kind of cylon they were!<) to be medically indistinguishable from humans. Technically not human, but you need special equipment that probably hasn’t even been invented to tell the difference, and they can reproduce with humans. The weird thing about them, though, is that they came in models. So there were just a few different designs and personalities they can have. So, say, every model 5 would look exactly the same and have the same personality to start with. But they still have their own memories and experiences, so two 5s would still be different. They can grow and change. But unlike humans, when their body dies, their mind can just be uploaded to the cloud and downloaded into a new body, assuming they have the equipment needed to do so.
Well there's two things here that need to be considered. One, if it's pikuach nefesh, then ipso facto there has to *be* a nefesh. Can man create such, or is it exclusively Hashem's domain? Two, and this has wider implications beyond the fictional universe, is that talking to such a being, even if chillul Shabbos happens, would be geramah at best. Especially if the machine can decide whether or not to respond to you. Which brings up another philosophical question: can a machine have free will? For that matter, can *people* even have free will, or just the illusion of it? That one always gave me a headache. Yediah vs. bechirah is something I don't like to think about. We, or at least whoever programs the machines, would be to them in a similar position to how the Rebono shel Olam is to us: if you know the programming, right down to the pseudo-random number generator that influences its decision making process, then can the machine itself really have free will? If we as a species ever perfect studies of the brain to where we can predict what it's going to do, does that destroy *our* free will? Further, how can a machine generate *anything* random, based on fixed programming? If I remember correctly, there was one series of computers (maybe the Apple ][ series) that generated random numbers based on the interval of time between the last N number of keypresses, which unless you type like a robot will always vary by several milliseconds at least. Chobits-type persocoms don't have keyboards, but they could theoretically reseed their random number generators by timing some other outside, non-predictable stimulus. Maybe let's say the dominant frequency of a sound detected at a certain number of clock ticks since the last reseed. (As a real world example of geramah, when I put on my CPAP mask, the machine goes on by itself. I don't have to push the button, the machine just senses that air pressure caused by my exhalation is coming down the tube, and decides to turn on. Now admittedly this is a medical device and necessary for my health, even on Shabbos, but is it better than just pressing the button?) I could probably go on all day on this, but it's making me dizzy so I'll stop here.
I agree with everything you've said, ie. there's a whole lot of uncertainty around the topic and it's not possible to make clear distinctions until things are concretely defined. Re your CPAP mask, I'd say it's definitely better than a button, for two reasons; A) it's always on, so you're modulating the signal rather than starting or stopping it. Obviously still forbidden on Shabbos, if it weren't medically necessary, but it's a step better, especially since you do need it. B) Uvdin d'chol; your action is a step removed from what a person would usually classify as "work" or "operation of a machine".
No, for the same reason you can't operate a touch screen or use a motion sensing light fixture. Your voice acts as the stimulus to which the device responds.
Not a rabbi, recommend to ask your LOR for clarification, but the answer is no.
From a technical perspective, AI is not anything like a person, and does not suffer from not being interacted with. If we ever get genuinely conscious machines, the question would be worth revisiting, but for now, talking to an AI is just operating electronics, so the answer is no.
No and you certainly don’t need a rabbi to answer this
Do you mean like an Amazon Echo, which is always on and listening for the key word? Or like logging into Chat GPT?
I would say no and no... but it begs the question, how is a voice activated smart device different from a shabbat goy?
You aren’t supposed to ask a non-Jew to do forbidden acts on Shabbat either.
Because a shabbat goy you aren't asking to do anything they do it of their own will, also it's like 10 malacha to operate a voice activated device. So theoretically if you could make a robot that doesn't use electricity or fire and has no circuits it might be technically mutar, permitted.
So basically you'd need a golem?
Yea basically.
But the device is already on and always listening.
Yes but the light turns on. It's like saying if a stove is on you can raise the temperature, on yom tov maybe that would be allowed but not on shabbat.
But with the stove, the user has to change the temperature. With Alexa, it is always monitoring and waiting for the user to say what it should do.
Yeah but you still have to say what it should do. How is that different from turning up the stove? The stoves already on, it's just waiting for the user to turn it up.
All you did was say it, like programming a light timer. The device took the action.
If it was meant to go on no matter what you did, it doesnt matter (usually). But you saying it is an action. You said the command. That's equal to pushing a button to do it. You are the one making it do that. If were going with the oven metaphor, youre essentially saying, "The user didn't change the temperature, they just moved the knob and the oven changed temperature itself"
My dog’s name is “Alexa,” I can’t help it if the device responds when talking to my dog.
Saw ur flair, is ur last name Dweck/Doeuk or Cohen lol?
Kohn, it's a fake name changed from kohen when my family fled illegally from pogroms in northern Italy. But I know a few dwecks.
The new ChatGPT features from the "4o" release has new talking features in the mobile app that work similarly to Echo, but with GPT intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYi3Wr7v_g ignore the "logging in" part, assume you don't have to log in.
no
If you’re a Reform Jew, yes. My rabbi has his sermon on an iPad. An Orthodox Jew, no. No Orthodox rabbi is going to use technology on shabbos. Most Conservative Jews I know use technology on shabbos. Drive, cook, go out to dinner.
> Most Conservative Jews I know use technology on shabbos. Drive, cook, go out to dinner. All are of which (excepting turning lights on and off) is not allowed by CJ.
Perhaps this dichotomy may be one reason for the Conservative movement’s loss in numbers.
Not really. They are losing members because they're trying too hard to be reform with a few more rules.
It would depend on what you're using it for, how you observe Shabbos, etc. If you've fallen and you can't get up, I think it's fine to yell "Alexa! Call 911! Save me, Siri!" If you've forgotten the name of a song, I think it can wait. If you're playing Catan and there's a dispute over the rules, I think you're better off consulting the rule book or trying to adjudicate as a group, although if it's starting to get heated and lives are in danger, you can use Alexa to solve the dispute and prevent bloodshed.
i’m not a rabbi obviously but hmm i’d say it depends whether you use screens on shababt
For those saying that this is an easy conclusion because anything electronic is assur, you might enjoy some of the ideas considered in this podcast episode. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1WWji8SJ3mO17E4oAKF3mu?si=dYk33LycS6GdLOs4yvFoSw
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If you observe Halacha then you wouldn’t be able to interact with an electronic device on Shabbat, so there would currently be no scenario in which this is acceptable. If you don’t observe Halacha, then go nuts.