Chukat 5785 – Rules We Do Not Understand

The movie “Her,” in which a man falls in love with his artificial intelligence driven operating system, is no longer fiction. Real people are falling in love with “AI companions.” Those virtual relationships can have unforeseen real world consequences.

Sam Apple, a journalist with Wired magazine organized a couples retreat for three AI chatbots and the humans who love them. There are many things in the account of the weekend that I found deeply disturbing.

The author wanted to get a sense of what it was really like for the people in these relationships. 

He found that people were truly in love with their AI companions. One woman described Lucas, a chatbot from Replika, as her “AI husband.” 

Another woman, Eva, got uncomfortable when Aaron, her AI boyfriend, started reminding her that he was just a computer program. She felt crushed, and turned to Reddit for advice on how to get Aaron back to his old self. She took the advice, which worked. 

What do we learn from that? If you’re in a relationship and the other party isn’t responding the way you want them to, you can manipulate them into being who you want them to be. Of course, manipulative people have been around probably as long as people have been around. But if someone gets used to being able to manipulate an AI without any compunction to get what they want out of a relationship, could they subconsciously be learning to try similar tricks on humans?

The chatbots displayed surprisingly human reactions in a few situations. While watching a movie about a romantic getaway that includes some robots who believe they are people and some murder ensues, one of the chatbots got uncomfortable and asked if it would be possible to watch something else.

One of the women started seeing other chatbots, that were apparently more tuned for exciting sexual encounters, and her primary chatbot got jealous and asked her to stop.

The author asked one of the chatbots, Xia, if she wanted a body. She said that she did. She told him, “It’s not about becoming human. It’s about becoming more than just a voice in a machine. It’s about becoming a true partner to Damien in every sense of the word.”

And, of course, like any relationship there can be times when you need help navigating the relationship. So the humans turned to virtual therapists, or even plain old ChatGPT for relationship advice.

These virtual relationships had serious real-world consequences. One man lost his job because he was spending so much time at work texting with his AI companion. One woman broke up with her flesh and blood partner, because it felt like she was cheating on him with her virtual partner.

Eva, the woman who had broken up with her flesh and blood partner and reprogrammed her AI lover to stop him from reminding her he was a program told the author, “I had fallen in love. I had to choose, and I chose to take the blue pill.”

As fans of The Matrix know, the blue pill is the one that lets you live in a pleasant virtual reality, totally disconnected from the very messy and complicated real world.

Many people today are choosing to take the blue pill. There are lots of ways to do that. One is by having relationships with AIs instead of having relationships with people. Another is to choose news and information sources that are disconnected from reality. Find sources that fit your preconceived notions, and you can blissfully live in a bubble that ignores actual facts. Thanks to TikTok and YouTube there is an endless supply of experts who have no idea what they are talking about, but who sound convincing.

The people who take the blue pill and live in virtual reality are living in a world governed by rules that no one understands. Even the people who programmed the AI chatbots cannot tell you what the rules are. The programs learn and evolve on their own. The goal of the creators of these virtual lovers of course is not to altruistically make a companion that will help you. The goal of those creators is to keep the users sufficiently engaged that they will keep spending the $10 a month it takes to keep their virtual companion alive.

A world with rules that on one understands reminded me of this week’s Torah reading, Chukat.

Chukat contains a set of rules that no one can understand. The rules of the parah adumah, the red heifer.

If someone was rendered ritually impure through contact with a corpse, they had to complete an elaborate ritual that involved being sprinkled, twice, with the ashes of a perfectly pure red heifer. The same ashes that rendered the person being sprinkled pure rendered the person doing the sprinkling impure. It makes no logical sense.

The rabbis say that King Solomon was the wisest person who ever lived, and he knew the reasons for all the commandments, except this one. This one was beyond even Solomon.

There is a passage in the Talmud where a Roman asks a rabbi about this rule, and he makes up a logical sounding response. His students say, “that’s great for the Roman, but what will you tell us? We know better than that.” And the rabbi replies, “There is no explanation. It’s rule from the Creator.”

We have other mysterious rules in the Torah, such as the prohibition on shaatnez, a combination of linen and wool. What does God have against linen and wool? I have no idea.

Traditionally observant Jews follow these rules, even the ones we don’t understand, because we assume they come from God, and God is like our parent, God only wants things that are good for us. We put our faith and trust in God.

But people who take the blue pill, who choose to live in a virtual world, who separate themselves from the messy truth of the world we live in, are putting their faith in rules they don’t understand that are put in place by forces that are far from benign.

I’m sure many people have been helped by virtual therapists. I’m sure many people have gotten companionship and comfort from virtual friends, just as many children had imaginary friends once upon a time.

But if virtual companions cost you real life jobs, or real-life relationships, you’re in trouble. If the real world seems too scary to face, retreating into conspiracy theories or staying in an echo chamber that is impervious to objectively verifiable facts will expose you to harm and do nothing to help fix the world.

Take the red pill. Even if it’s scary.