Elon Musk’s challenge and the lesson of the Golem

The creation of then human being it is one of the temptations that many cultures have not resisted. Even Jewish culture in its long history has not escaped this temptation. There Bible he seems to give implicit approval to this idea when in Psalm 8 he states: “You (Lord) have made him little less than God.”

After all, in the story of the creation of man it is explicitly said that man has the task of dominating the Earth, which means that man has the duty to use all the means at his disposal to conquer and transform the environment of which man is part, respecting its resources. This attitude has meant that theJudaism has always considered science and the study of the laws that regulate the Universe as a fundamental part of man’s research.

The science however, it is only a tool – and not the only one – that man has at his disposal to improve his living conditions: art, imagination, thought, solidarity are other expressions that give a complete meaning to the function – mission – of man. In expressing all his man’s potential he must not forget that he is not the absolute master of reality and that any attempt to completely submit reality to his desires will not bring the required advantages if it does not respect some conditions. In doing all this, man must not lose the awareness that any action he takes must be done while continuing to maintain responsibility for his every act.

In recent times we often talk about experiments whose consequence is precisely that of freeing man from his responsibilities: the implantation in the brain of a man of a chip Neuralink it is the first step towards the construction of a “hominid” that has human characteristics, but not its history.

The neuro technologies company of Elon Musk which develops implantable neural interfaces, has produced a chip that has been given its name Telepathy and which, as the name suggests, is used to control external devices with just your thoughts. The technology and risks of implantation in the brain are not yet completely clear. Although approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it is a private initiative which does not appear to respond to a large ethical committee that evaluates its risks and consequences. The information we find in the press does not allow us to make a judgment on the effectiveness of the instrument and its reproducibility, which is essential to confirm its scientific nature.

Aside from the technical aspects, it would be necessary for such research to be applied with all the criteria required experimentation requires: alongside the presumption that it is a project created to help disabled people, on the other there is the suspicion that it has the aim of surprising and demonstrating that, with the economic means available to the company, it is also possible to do “miracles”. However the lack of an ethics committee that it has been trained and consulted in advance would make its introduction into the market problematic.

The attempt to create a hominid it’s not new. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b) speaks of an important rabbi who, following the instructions written in Sefer Yetzira, the Book of Creationcreates a hominid who will then kill another rabbi: the hominid is not a real human being and is immediately turned into dust.

Much better known is the Golem case, a being created by the Maharal of Prague – the great mystic Rabbi Yehuda ben Betsalel – to defend the Jews from accusations of ritual murder. The problem is that the Golem then escapes the rabbi’s control and ends up doing a lot of damage and the Maharal is forced to transform him from a living man to a dead man. The Maharal plays on the word Emits written on the Golem’s forehead: Emits it means Truth, and once the first letter is removed, it becomes Met, that is, Dead; the first letter in the word truth in hebrew is a Alefthe first letter of the name Adam and of the Name of God: when man loses his Alefonly his blood remains (Dam) and therefore loses his soul.

Gershom Scholemthe great Kabbalah scholar, proposed giving the name Golem to megacomputer designed by Weizman, the most important research center in Israel. This metaphor of the Golem should make us reflect. Just as the strange reaction of the on-board computer of the spaceship in the film should make us reflect 2001 A Space Odyssey who no longer responds to the orders of the men in command who are forced to silence him while he sings the song Ring around the rosie.

In short, the use of science is certainly desirable and man must know how to make good use of it, but not abuse it. The problem is that the responsibility for every decision must remain in human hands: Only intellectual effort can lead to true progress. Certain choices must be coordinated by committees made up of people from various cultural and scientific backgrounds: delegating the future of humanity to a machine will not lead to progress, but to the regression of man.