A ChatGPT Sermon?

Abstract A sermon experiment used a ‘500 word sermon in the style of Rabbi Howard Cooper, generated by ChatGPT’. This bland, artificial text lacked ‘soul’, humour and anything genuinely illuminating. The exponential growth of such programmes has benign applications in science and medical research but threatens to make swathes of professions redundant. Technological connectedness is not a substitute for human connectedness. The Jewish New Year offers an opportunity for introspection and reflection on what it means to be human and not a machine. We might be ‘programmed’ by genetic makeup, education, parental background or class, but the work of being human lies in expressing the multiple dimensions of our individuality, including our capacity for compassion and justice. Machines are neither kind nor caring – this is the difference between what Artificial Intelligence can manifest and the expression of human spiritual intelligence.