Religion

Lisa Curtis, senior fellow and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at Center for a New American Security, and Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discuss the geopolitical implications of India’s general elections and the influence of religion on politics in India. Alyssa Ayres, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and adjunct senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, moderates the discussion.

Jessica Stern, U.S. special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, discusses the current state of LGBTQ+ rights globally. Ruth Messinger, global ambassador for American Jewish World Service, moderates. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. This series explores social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the Apple podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. And, as always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Ruth Messinger and Jessica Stern with us for today’s discussion on “Global LGBTQ+ Rights.” Ruth Messinger will moderate the conversation. She is the global ambassador for American Jewish World Service. She was the president and CEO of the American Jewish World Service, a position she held from 1998 to 2017. And prior to her work with AJWS, Ruth worked in New York City government serving as a city council member representing the Upper West Side and later as Manhattan Borough president. She’s also a member of CFR’s Religion Advisory Committee, a member of CFR. And she is going to set the stage for this conversation, drawing upon her experience of the work that the American Jewish World Service has done with the LGBTQ+ community around the world, have a conversation with our distinguished speaker, Jessica Stern, and then we will turn to all of you for your questions which you can either write or raise your hand. So with that, Ruth, thank you for doing this. And over to you to introduce. MESSINGER: OK. Thank you so much, Irina. And I just want to say to the Council, I think many of us out there who are members or attendees of Council functions feel a very special place for the fact that you have a social justice stream of work, that you feature webinars that talk about global social justice. And in this instance, and my guest says on a couple of other recent instances, you have highlighted the issues of LGBT concern globally, because not enough people focus there. We have a very special guest. I’m going to introduce her to everybody and ask her a couple of sort of open-ended questions. And then, as Irina mentioned, later in the discussion I’m going to talk a little bit about the American Jewish World Service work in the same arena. But Jessica Stern plays on the big scale. She was appointed by President Biden, and she is our country’s special envoy to advance the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons. And that means leading the efforts of the United States to protect LGBTQI people globally, but also to advance their interests. So to protect them from discrimination and violence on the one hand, but also to see if they can—if she can promote advocacy for them to be treated equitably in their own communities. Jessica comes to the State Department with an amazing history working on LGBT rights and on human rights. She led Outright International, which is a global LGBTQI+ human rights organization. She was its executive director for ten years. She had observer status at the U.N. which is. again, really important. And she built the world’s largest COVID LGBTQI+ grantmaking program. She also quintupled the budget of her organization, something we were almost able to do at the American Jewish World Service. But before this, Jessica was for many years a researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch, at Amnesty International, and at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has a long history of multilateral engagement, so I’m not going to actually read all of that. I think she’ll let us know some of the groups that she works with internationally at the U.N. level and on behalf of the United States. Because I don’t want to take too much time away from her, but I do want to say that she provided the first LGBTQI+ testimony in a U.N. Security Council hearing and has frequently served as an advisor to the U.N., including as a founding member of the U.N. Women LGBTI Reference Group. She is a published author. She is often cited in the media. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including from Crain’s, Gay City News, and the Metropolitan Community Church—well-loved by many of us. She is an adjunct associate professor and has taught LGBTQI+ rights at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Jessica, it’s quite a—it’s quite a bio, and it’s quite a dedication to these issues on a global scale. And I guess really the first question, because it’s a question that I think the public sometimes asks, is why are LGBTQI+ rights a priority in United States foreign policy? STERN: Thank you so much for that warm welcome, Ruth. And I’m a big fan of yours and have admired your career over a long time. So I feel like I am really very fortunate today to have the opportunity to be in conversation with you. I would say to have you all to myself for an hour, but all to myself plus fifty of our friends listening, and everyone who will read the transcript afterward. So, you know, thank you for this opportunity. And I just also want to thank the Council on Foreign Relations for increasing its commitment to LGBTQI-inclusive foreign policy. This is now my second opportunity to speak at a CFR event in this role, which is really a great sign about how CFR is trying to educate its members and educate the world, really, about why LGBTQI+ rights have to be taken seriously. So why is this a U.S. foreign policy priority? I’m so glad you asked that question. Some people think—hopefully, you’re getting applauded in the background, Ruth. You know, some people hear LGBTQI issues, and they think: Why do those people get so much attention? They’re talking about special rights or new concepts of rights. And that’s just not the case. What we’re actually trying to do with U.S. foreign policy is tackle the overrepresentation of LGBTQI+ persons among those who experience discrimination, violence, stigma, bullying, exclusion in schools and healthcare settings, and are denied recognition before the law. And so we try to give attention to this issue set to redress those wrongs. And we find that LGBTQI issues are literally connected to every single part of U.S. foreign policy. If we’re trying to eradicate HIV and AIDS, then we have to be working on LGBTQI issues because there’s an overrepresentation of men who have sex with men among key populations. If we’re talking about national security, then we have to recognize that LGBTQI people are often among those targeted by extremist organizations, and terrorists. And actually, LGBTQI+ people can be almost like a canary in the coal mine and a bellwether of—that can be used for atrocity prevention. Or maybe one more example is American economic interests. People sink or swim together. And so if LGBTQI people are prevented from accessing the formal labor market, they’re the last hired and the first fired, then that has an impact not only on American economic prosperity, but on all of our trade relationships. So there’s so many ways that this intersects with the U.S. government’s priorities. And I think President Biden and Secretary Blinken have been very clear in saying: We shouldn’t just be talking about LGBTQI+ rights in June at Pride. We should be doing this work year-round. MESSINGER: I think that’s an amazing answer. And I would just—we’re going to continue to talk about your work in a minute, then leave the AJWS work to a little later. But I just loved your answer, because I get this often on behalf of American Jewish World Service. And I get it from people who love the organization, love the idea that we do international human rights at the grassroots level, but then when they hear—some of them—that we have a big LGBTIQ+ portfolio, their response is, well, I care about those rights too, but when it comes to the rest of the world there are other things that are more important. So why is it you have such a large portfolio? And of course, the answer is precisely what you said. If people are high on the list of those who get discriminated against or treated with various forms of intolerance or oppression, then that is the mark of a society that is not honoring human rights. So I liked your talking about canary in the coal mine. So now I’m going to ask you the toughest question, which is: When you think about the work you’ve been doing for well over a decade, and now the perspective that you have as a member of the U.S. State Department, you know, what’s your—what’s your report on the state of the world for LGBTQI+ rights? How are we doing? STERN: It is the hardest question, actually, because people want to hear that the moral arc of the universe, you know, bends towards justice. And it does, I really believe that. But I want to be really clear that it is not business as usual in terms of homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, interphobia. We have two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, strong and vibrant LGBTQI activists and organizations around the world and amazing allies like AJWS. We’ve made remarkable legal and policy progress, including over the course of my lifetime. And, you know, if you’ve lived in the United States, then you know there was a time when marriage equality was almost unfathomable, or that, you know, Pride events were unfathomable. But, you know, really over our lifetimes we’ve seen LGBTQI rights increasingly be socially accepted, so much so that we actually managed to see bipartisan support for the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress. And of course, Congress doesn’t agree on that many things. So it’s really quite a testament to— MESSINGER: Especially now, when they don’t agree on anything. But yes. STERN: But the truth is, we’re also seeing the weaponization of LGBTQI+ issues, to advance other agendas—like undermining democracy, like turning out conservative voter bases, like distracting from economic inequality, the price of food inflation. And so LGBTQI+ rights have also become very visible. In fact, I would argue that LGBTQI+ rights are more visible than the community itself has political power and substantive equality. And so just a few examples. Last night I went out to dinner with some friends. And one of my friends said to me, did you hear about the attack that just took place in Beirut on a group of LGBTQI activists? And what happened was a right-wing extremist group, I believe it was called the Soldiers of God, had attacked LGBTQI people who were marching through the streets of Beirut, pelting them with rocks and stones, causing three people to be seriously injured enough to go to the hospital. And part of what was so disconcerting, Ruth, is that I didn’t even hear about it until last night. And the reason I didn’t hear about it is because you can’t keep up with all of the acts of violence and all of the attacks on LGBTQI+ people’s rights, even in my position. And so I want to be really clear that the state of the world for LGBTQI people is crisis. And we need more friends. And we need more allies. And we need to make clear—and this is part of why I think this conversation really matters—we need to make clear that when we hear about attacks on LGBTQI people, it’s not just somebody else’s problem. People don’t actually have such strong views about such a small minority for no reason. LGBTQI people consume a great deal of political airways in country after country around the world because we’re used as a political symbol. And so I’m very worried about the state of the world. And if I had one ask of people listening, and I know there are a lot of experts in in the room today—the virtual room, and I hope to that they’ll jump in with their questions and wisdom. But, you know, one of my asks would be: How can we make clearer to allies what’s at stake for them in protecting LGBTQI people? This is not a niche issue. This issue set affects all of us. MESSINGER: Well, I think—I think that’s a fantastic perspective. I think that we—you know, some of this is starting at home. We also need to make it clear, given some of what’s going on in the country right now, I suspect, that the fact that you exist—I don’t mean you, personally—but the fact that you exist in this job, that this is a thoughtful and central concern of the United States State Department, drives some members of Congress crazy, for not understanding that gay rights are human rights, for not understanding that these are, in fact, bellwether signs of how our country, as well as other countries, are or are not flourishing. So I love what you said. And I love your description. And we’ll come back to some of that later. I did just want to take a few minutes to note here the point-counterpoint. So Jessica is involved in representing the United States government through the State Department and looking at these issues globally. And as you’ve heard, when she does the state of the LGBTQI+ world it’s not so great. American Jewish World Service, as some people may be aware, is a is an individual, international human rights organization based on Jewish principles and values, but working exclusively at the ground level. We have grantee partners basically in the non-Jewish world across seventeen countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. And I chose to ask if I could talk a little bit about our work for this specific reason that of our 522 grantee partners, 176 are working on issues of sexual health and rights. And of that group, most of them are at least somewhat involved with LGBTQI+ rights. And some of them are exclusively involved with those rights. And in this current fiscal year, we have granted over $3 ½ million to support LGBTQI+ work. And we currently fund 101 organizations in eight countries where that is their exclusive work. And I just want to say that that is for the same reasons that Jessica spoke. In those countries, whatever other work we’re doing, whatever level of—whatever you would like to call it—democracy and justice exists on the part of the government, this is a key indicator of whether or not the fundamental ideas of human rights are or are not respected. And to be very blunt about it, and Jessica will talk about this I’m sure some more, but in the world two-thirds of LGBTQI+ people have experienced some degree of violence. And in nearly seventy countries, being LGBTQI+ is a criminal offense. And in some countries, it’s punishable by death. So we choose—as Jessica works on global scene—we choose to fund these small groups, and I’ll give some examples later, but that are organizing, that are protecting the rights of their members, that are speaking up against their government policies, that are sometimes going to court. But that are often, as Jessica implied, just basically concerned with literally the physical protection of their members. So, Jessica, having said that globally the picture is, like, not as great as we’d like it to be, why don’t you next give us examples of some successes and where you’ve seen policy change, and where you’ve actually seen your role as representing the United States on these issues make a positive difference. STERN: Thanks for bringing in the dimension of the importance of civil society, and specifically civil society fighting for LGBTQI+ organizations, Ruth. I hope we’ll come back to that as a concept, because I don’t think this work can succeed without LGBTQI civil society organizations and allies having access to resources. But there are successes. There have been lots of successes, both in the mandate that I work on and, you know, on the world stage for LGBTQI+ rights. Let me just say, today there are five special envoys for LGBTQI+ rights around the world, which is a very good thing. Of course, there are roughly two hundred countries in the world. So there’s like a little bit of a gap between where we are today and where we want to be. But most of those positions are relatively new. So the trend is towards inclusion. One of the things I’m really proud of is the expansion of LGBTQI+ reporting in the annual Human Rights Report published by the Department of State. You know, if you aren’t familiar with the Human Rights Reports, they are an incredibly important source of information, sometimes the sole source of evidence used in asylum adjudication claims. And so it’s very important that we have robust LGBTQI+ information in them. And even though the department overall is streamlining the Human Rights Reports, because there had been less inclusive reporting than we would have wanted to see, our office has been able to expand that section, including issues as varied as corrective rape, conversion therapy practices, harmful and unnecessary surgeries on intersex persons, attacks on Pride festivities, the inability of LGBTQI+ organizations to legally register. And so I would say that if we continue in the vein that we’re going in, the Human Rights Report will actually become one of the richest data sources updated on an annual basis about the state of the world for LGBTQI+ people, which we’re very proud of. In March, my office worked with our Bureau of International Organizations and the U.S. mission to the U.N. to facilitate the second-ever Security Council Arria on LGBTQI+ issues. And you might be wondering, why does that matter? Well, it matters because what the Security Council says and does impacts every part of the U.N.’s work. It is the most powerful body. And if LGBTQI issues are not a part of its portfolio of work, then we’re being overlooked in the space where decisions are made and resources are allocated. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten into the official sessions, you can imagine some of the governments that might have blocked those efforts, but the way we develop a mainstreaming strategy is through side events, among others. And the U.S. government made a number of pledges in that space, including about our commitment to increasing LGBTQI work in our broader peace and security agenda. I think another great example comes from executive order—well, I won’t—I won’t say it by number, because then I think I’m getting a little nerdy for the audience. It’s a nerdy audience, so that might be OK. But the president’s 2022 executive order from June, 14075, that actually asked the Department of State, USAID, Treasury, and the Department of Health and Human Services to develop an action plan towards working to ban conversion therapy practices around the world. So we released that action plan in May of this year. You can find it online. And it basically gives us a mandate to work to oppose these harmful and often torturous practices. MESSINGER: That’s fantastic. STERN: I’ll just end with one last example. You know, one thing that we’ve done that I think is really important, is we’ve also helped to give out some basic tools to make inclusive diplomacy easier. And this is very bureaucratic, but it’s through the effective use of bureaucratic tools that we ensure it’s not just one special envoy or one office that knows how to do this work. So we’ve massively revamped the annual Pride cable that we come out with so that every embassy understands the do’s and don’ts for how to defend and advocate for this population. MESSINGER: So I think that’s really important. And I would just—you know, to underscore what Jessica was saying about their work in some countries and how basic it is—just as one example. In Kenya, as a success story, we in the American Jewish World Service support the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. And it took us a battle in the supreme court in Kenya to allow that group to register as an NGO, because the Kenyan NGO Coordination Board had decided that any organization that had the word “gay” or “lesbian” in its name could not be a member of its NGO panel. So, you know, talking about bureaucratically means to exclude and group on rights. And we won that battle. And then two of our grantees worked to put Dr. Dennis Wamalwa on the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, which makes him the first openly intersex person to attain such a position in Africa. So it’s exactly what Jessica is saying, that even though she’s working significantly on a global level and at the interactions of the U.S. and other governments, that work is buttressed by the—by the unbelievable efforts being made by LGBTQI+ people and their organizations on the ground to affirm their rights and to tackle the bureaucracies in their own countries. Jessica, not to—not to leave bad news till near the end, can we just talk a little bit about the state of legislation in Uganda right now? STERN: Hmm. Many people in this conversation have been following the struggle of the LGBTQI+ movement in Uganda for a long time. There have been documentaries made about the community, including God Loves Uganda and Call Me Kuchu. And really, the work of the community to defend their rights has become an international story because LGBTQI+ Ugandans have felt that their own government wasn’t protecting them, and they needed support from allies around the world just to be safe. Unfortunately, the community took a major hit this year when President Museveni signed the anti-homosexuality act into law, which, I would argue, is one of the most extreme, far-reaching, and dangerous anti-LGBTQI+ laws in the world. And there are many reasons for this. But the government of Uganda already had criminalized sodomy. So this is really an attack on free speech, assembly, association, and allyship for LGBTQI+ persons. Just to name some of the provisions of it, if a landlord suspects that someone is LGBTQI+, they can’t rent to them and they have to actually report them to the police. In fact, anyone who suspects someone of being a member of the LGBTQI+ community is under a mandatory obligation to report them to authorities. So if I lived in Uganda and these eyeglasses that I’m wearing right now were to break or the prescription would become dated, I would have to decide do I feel safe going to my own doctor because that doctor could turn me in. So there’s no such thing as confidentiality, even in health care, even with your lawyer, even with your—a member of your clergy. So it’s incredibly unsafe. And one of the most ominous provisions of the anti-homosexuality act is that it effectively bans and criminalizes LGBTQI+ activism. So it makes it very difficult for LGBTQI activists and organizations to operate. Makes it very difficult for their allies to show up for them. And, of course, this is on top of criminal punishments for homosexuality that rise to life imprisonment and even the death penalty. So it’s quite extreme. We could go on about all the provisions of the law, but you get the gist. MESSINGER: Yeah. And I think I raised that not only because it is bad news, and I do want people to understand that there’s a lot of bad news on this front around the world, but also because this has been, like, a decade-long battle. We worked very closely with a fantastic LGBTI community, I think it’s like now ten years ago, who fought Museveni in court and stopped the passage of a similar law, or reversed it in the courts. And it was then not the law for a while. And so he’s gone back to, again, this fierce effort to enact it into law. And the law—as you pointed out—the law this time is infinitely more draconian. I did want to ask you one question. I don’t know how much it’s the case today, but I know that a few years ago it seemed pretty clear that some of the anti-gay sentiment was being stirred up by visiting American Evangelical pastors who either thought it was their job to spread their negative message globally, or—and/or, like, were being frustrated and not being able to get more anti-gay work going in the United States so they decided to go elsewhere in the world. And I know that at the time that I was on top of some of this, they were really poisoning the well by telling uninformed communities that gay people were all pedophiles and would literally kidnap and destroy their children unless they outlawed them. And I’m just wondering how much of that is still an issue, and if there’s anything that the United States government stateside can do to stop any of that activity. STERN: I just want to say, the argument that Ruth is pointing out—this notion that LGBTQI+ people are pedophiles, is an argument that I thought was maybe from my childhood, but wouldn’t be a reality as an adult, as more and more people come out, as more and more people realize that they have LGBTQI+ people in their family, in their congregation, at work. But actually, there’s been a radical resurgence of this argument. And it takes different forms. LGBTQI people are child abusers, kidnapping children, infiltrating schools, grooming children. And I just want to be clear: All of these are lies. They’re myths. And the speed with which these arguments—that take the exact same form—have spread from region to region is not a coincidence. And so I think your point is right, Ruth, that there are clearly U.S.-based right-wing extremists that are promoting these myths around the world and stoking the flames of anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment. Some of you may have followed that there’s an organization based in Tempe, Arizona that’s been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. I think so as not to give them airtime I won’t mention them by name in this space. But they traveled from Arizona to Kampala really on the eve of the signing of the anti-homosexuality act. And their executive director was, you know, standing next to the first lady, and apparently advocating for conversion therapy practices. So there’s two things that are true. One thing that’s true, is that U.S.-based extremists, many of whom have been discredited here at home, are exporting their strategies, U.S.-based arguments, and their money to other countries around the world and then trying to repackage them and sell them as African family values. The other thing that’s also true is that LGBTQI haters exist in every country in the world. So it’s not only that people are leaving the U.S. and exporting these ideas. There’s often an enabling environment in other countries as well, which can make for really toxic partnerships. MESSINGER: Right. And by the way around the world, without getting specific, some of the LGBTIQ+ groups that we have funded have been—all of their work has been literally just simply to try to educate locally to people who think they’ve never met a gay person, think they couldn’t possibly have a gay person in their families, and have adopted a whole set of negative—not only negative stereotypes, but then translate those into policy at the church, or at the school, or in the government. And need simple education, which some of our groups have undertaken to do. We’re now, I think, open for questions. So we’ll hear from the moderator when there are specific questions. But let me just get one more question into you, Jessica, first. And that is, in this sort of role that you have in the State Department on behalf of the United States government and globally, what are your priorities? STERN: Drink more coffee, sleep less, have more time in the job. You know, it’s hard to set a list of priorities because you actually almost want it to be infinite. But you can’t, because there are only so many hours in the day. We’re not effective if we tackle everything. So the broad framework for my office is the Presidential Memorandum on LGBTQI+ Inclusion in U.S. Foreign Policy and Foreign Assistance that President Biden issued on February 4, 2021. It provides a sort of high-level framework. With the amount of time that we have left where we know this office will continue to exist, we have several core priorities. So one is fighting conversion therapy practices worldwide. I think this issue is the great equalizer, because conversion therapy practices exist in every country on the planet. They take very ugly forms, everything from forced starvation, to forced medicalization, so-called corrective rape, the list really goes on and on. Sometimes at the leadership of families or religious leaders, sometimes at the hands of medical professionals, and sometimes even at the hands of government. You mentioned Uganda. The anti-homosexuality act in Uganda has this sort of ominous clause that seems to suggest that rehabilitation, also known as so-called conversion therapy practices, could be one of the forms of punishment. And I just want to be really clear, you can’t forcibly change someone’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or intersex status. So it doesn’t work and it creates lasting harm. A second priority for my office is strengthening and resourcing LGBTQI+ civil society organizations and their allies. And there are a lot of different policy directions that priority goes into. Let’s start with some of the simple ones. The ability to legally register an LGBTQI+ organization. In country after country, LGBTQI+ organizations are blocked from being able to operate. And if you don’t have legal status, it’s very hard to open a bank account, it’s very hard to get a grant, it’s hard to rent an office. And if something terrible happens and you have to advocate for your community, you really don’t have the credibility before the government that you would want. More examples. The ability of LGBTQI people to celebrate Pride in all of its beautiful, diverse rainbow and glitter forms. You know, Pride has joyful components, but fundamentally it’s an opportunity to assert political priorities and be in community. And in country after country, Prides are coming under attack and they’re being banned. So there are many provisions there. You know, I always feel like governments come and go, but community-based organizations are rock solid. They’re steady. They’ll be there, whether there’s a friend in the presidency or not. A third priority of mine is broadly working to support recognition by multilateral systems that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights. You know, when you said my bio you said I’ve done a lot of work in that space. I have done a lot of work in that space, and I have to say we still have so much work to do. We’re still fighting for recognition. And the reason why the multilateral arena really matters is because it’s bigger than one country, right? And, actually, if you look at the major impact litigation cases that have happened around the world on sodomy and things like that, on the NGLHRC case in Kenya that you were referencing, U.N. data and U.N. standards on concepts like the right to privacy or HIV prevalence is cited in case after case. So we need the multilateral system to recognize that LGBTQI+ people exist. And I could go on, but I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. MESSINGER: Fantastic. No, no, I’m going to—I’m going to go to a couple of questions. So, Jesse Bernstein, who has worked on this field for a great deal of time, has a question. Can we get Jesse to ask this question directly? Moderator, operator? Should I just read it? There he is. OK, Jesse, go. Q: Thanks, Jessica and Ruth. It’s a real pleasure to join you both today. My question is, do we need to rethink or reconsider any of our approaches to advancing LGBTQI+ rights, given the crisis that was described? Are there new lines of effort that need to be developed or new allies we should be considering? And what aren’t we doing that we should be? Thanks. MESSINGER: Jessica, you’re muted. STERN: Thanks. Thanks so much for that question, Jesse. And for those of you who don’t know Jesse, he has a long history of being a tireless advocate for LGBTQI+ persons. So it’s great to have him here. So that’s a multipart question. One thing I just want to acknowledge is that I think governments—we need more governments that care about LGBTQI people. And we need the governments that care about LGBTQI people to be better coordinated. I think you’ll find it’s sort of a patchwork quilt. And in some cases, we’re working very closely with other governments and in other places, you know, there’s a really long way to go. Whenever I visit a country, one of the first things that I do is I bring together all of the ambassadors from countries that care about LGBTQI+ rights to have a policy-level conversation. And I often start with an icebreaker which is: When was the last time you got together to talk about the policy priorities for this community? And the answer is usually, we saw each other at Pride or we engaged around this very specific crisis issue. And so I think that that shows that there’s actually a great resource we could tap into if we just were more proactive in identifying and working towards priorities together. I think a second priority that I want to identify is spending more money on this issue. Right now, the amount of funding that goes to support LGBTQI rights at the international level is less than $1 out of every $100 in development assistance. Let me say that again, so that everybody hears that. Less than $1 out of every $100 in development assistance worldwide. So what we know from the evidence is that LGBTQI people experience violence and discrimination in higher numbers. And what we know from the evidence is that we underinvest in this community. So if we really believe in justice and equality, we need our money to reflect our values. And then I guess the third point that I want to emphasize comes back really to where I started, which is this can’t just be an issue that we think about during Pride month. LGBTQI people are being attacked year-round. And if we had more concerted attention from more allies, we wouldn’t be living with the realities that we’re experiencing right now. So there’s a lot of lessons learned. We just need to persuade more people to partner with us. MESSINGER: Oh, fantastic. OK, I’m going to go next to a question from Keith Richburg, which sort of digs into the heart of U.S. policy and how the U.S. functions in the world. Keith. Q: Hi, can you hear me? MESSINGER: Yes, perfectly. Q: Great. Yeah. My question was simply that, to Jessica, what do you think the U.S. should do specifically in a case like Uganda? Do you suggest we cut off aid, for example, to Uganda and other countries passing these kinds of anti-LGBTQ laws? And if we go that route, doesn’t that create an opening for countries like China and Russia, which we know couldn’t care less about the countries passing these kinds of LGBTQ laws? I saw a story in Politico saying that the Biden administration has a dilemma. So what do you think? STERN: Thanks, Keith. That actually is reflective of what I think is sort of the heart of the debate in foreign policy. If the U.S. defends the human rights of marginalized and vulnerable groups, will it cost us potential allies? And will other world powers swoop in and benefit? And I would argue that that’s a false dichotomy, that many of our allies are drawn to us and prioritize the U.S. because of our values and because we’re fighting for inclusion and equity for all people. There are countries around the world where the U.S. is not very popular with the government but is extremely popular with the people. And part of the reason is because of our commitment to democracy, free and fair elections. freedom from corruption. So I think it’s a very complex issue. On the question of whether or not we should cut aid to countries over their LGBTQI+ track record, I want to say that it’s too simple and too problematic to simply say yes or no. I want to underscore that no country in the world has a perfect track record on LGBTQI+ issues. The U.S. doesn’t have a perfect track record on LGBTQI+ issues. So the first thing that we would do in any situation is ask local LGBTQI activists, what strategies do you want? What do you think is on the table? What is going to help you? And what’s going to create a desired effect? If the U.S. arbitrarily cuts aid for schools, clean drinking water, climate justice in the name of LGBTQI issues, then who’s going to suffer? Not only everyone in the country, but LGBTQI+ people are going to be blamed. And that could actually fan the flames of backlash and violence against them. We have a lot of tools at our disposal. We can impose visa restrictions on people that violate the human rights of LGBTQI+ people. Those are extremely effective. There are a lot of officials in other governments that want to come to the United States to send their kids to school, to obtain medical care, et cetera, to go on vacation. We have the ability to review country status under AGOA. Whether or not you receive favorable trade status with the U.S. depends in part on your human rights track record. We have the ability to exercise our authority in international financial institutions like the World Bank. We have the ability to issue business advisories and travel warnings. We have the ability to decline meetings with foreign heads of state that want their photo taken with President Biden, but to have access to senior U.S. government officials there also has to be an alignment of priorities. So I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal. And we have to decide with surgical precision which ones are most appropriate in each situation. MESSINGER: Fantastic. Barbara McBee, you have a question. Although, I think your question might only relate to domestic situations. But we’ll give—let Jessica give it a try. Q: Thank you both. Thank you, Jessica, for the work you do. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you so much. And my question is, not just, as I was thinking about what you said, not just U.S., but there is a rise of people who are able to deny us services, or association, or access, claiming their religious rights. So given that, whether it’s U.S. or abroad, what are our recourses with such an ability? Because to use religion, I guess, we’re just supposed to back off. It’s a sacred thing. But actually, it’s not. It’s being used as a tool. STERN: Barbara, you have such good energy. Thank you so much for that question. Q: Thank you. STERN: Ruth, I wonder if you want to kick it off, just given your own career? Because I do think it has a specifically domestic component, and then I can follow you. MESSINGER: Sure. Well, I mean, I think it’s—you know, you’re—we are all dealing with this. You know, well, mostly they used to tell us, you know, like my freedom to do certain things stops it at—you know, like, before I punch you in the face, you know? And so this is a little bit of like there are conflicts of rights. We talk about freedom of rights, freedom of religion. But right now, we see in a variety of areas, not just the LGBTQI+ area, that freedom—religious freedom is being used and abused in various ways. So I think it’s—I want to pick up a piece of language from Jessica—it’s like, looking at changes in law or practice with surgical precision, because you don’t want to pass laws that are going to be found unconstitutional. You know, it’s this whole question of can—you know, this ridiculous amount of time that we spent in America deciding who can bake a cake. I mean, that wasn’t what it was, but can bakers deny the sale of their goods? So, Barbara, you raise it in some very serious contexts in terms of, like, hospital policy and organizational policy. And it’s really, for me at my mind, it’s not so different from the international model that Jessica was talking about. We could be much more careful about which hospitals, organizations we do business with as a country, which ones we provide full tax-protected status to. And we can pay a little bit of attention to their human resource and human rights policies. And, of course, I’m quite clear that they will say—which is what the bakers basically said—like, you know, freedom of—it’s entirely my right. But these freedoms have to be sorted out and looked at, because sometimes they conflict with each other. That’s what I would say domestically. And we’ve seen some serious efforts to both well limit the rights of organizations that were denying rights, and also to, you know, provide some incentives for people who are doing things the right way. Jessica. STERN: You know, I’m just keeping an eye on the time. And I see that Ani Zonneveld has had her hand up. And I have a feeling it could be a good continuation of Barbara’s question. MESSINGER: OK, so go ahead. I just saw Ani’s name here, but not the question. Ani, go ahead. Q: Hi, Jessica. Hi, Ruth. Ani Zonneveld, Muslims for Progressive Values. I actually wanted to highlight, we do have conversion therapy going on here in the United States with some of the Muslim therapists. And also did you know, Jessica, that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and that organization you were referencing from Arizona have partnered up in implementing, and funding, and promoting their definition of family values? And this is being implemented through the 57 countries of the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, through the U.N. mechanisms, as well as at the national level. And we see that here in the United States how the protests being led by conservatives and the teaming up of the conservative Muslim with a Christian right in opting out of the inclusive curriculums in public schools, et cetera. So there is a correlation between the domestic and the international. And at the international level, at the State Department, how are you going to be addressing this through the OIC? Thanks. MESSINGER: Thanks. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons. MESSINGER: Well, Jessica was going to respond to Ani. OPERATOR: Yes. MESSINGER: But go ahead. Let’s get Guthrie’s question out. Let’s get the last—we have two questions. pending in the box. Let’s get them both out, and Jessica and I will try to sort them out. So Guthrie first. STERN: All right. Q: Hi, thank you for having this conversation. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. And I’m thinking about the Synod on Synodality happening starting tomorrow at the Vatican, amid speculation that the Catholic church might change some of its policies in regard to LGBTQ people. Jessica, are you seeing any signs of religious change in terms of the global policy landscape? MESSINGER: OK, that’s great. And let me get the last question now from my good friend, Katherine Marshall. Katherine, go ahead. Q: Hi, I’m Katherine Marshall, Georgetown University. I’m curious as to what your strategy is in the U.N. specifically. We’re hearing very worrying reports that family has really become almost a third-rail issue that’s almost not mentioned, with different kinds of alliances taking form around these issues. So how do we respond to that? MESSINGER: All right. Jessica, why don’t you take a crack at all of those pieces? And then we’ll try to do a little bit of just ending that. STERN: Triage. No, that sounds great. And thanks for taking a few questions to get multiple voices in. Ani, I didn’t know that there’s an alliance between the OIC and the organization in Arizona. I’d love information on that. I think that’s incredibly important and sort of revelatory for me. So if—I think you know how to reach me, but please do reach out. That would be something I’d like to follow up on. I will say that the OIC has over the past month been more proactive at the U.N. in attacking efforts to mainstream and protect LGBTQI+ programming and policies at the U.N. So that partnership may actually have been part of the catalyst for it, which would be very helpful to know. So how to address it? I think I’d like to get a little more information before having a full response on that. I think it was Guthrie. Guthrie, thanks for giving me an opportunity to say something positive. I am seeing a lot of forward momentum in the religion space on this. One of the most important steps forward that I’m seeing is that more people of faith are coming out as LGBTQI people. And more LGBTQI+ people are coming out as people of faith. And I think that’s essential because there is this myth that LGBTQI people are anti-religion. And that’s never been the case. Intersectionality is a reality. And a lot of people who I know firsthand experience discrimination and violence because they’re members of the LGBTQIA plus community find safe harbor in their higher power and their religious community, that is there for them when often their government or their own family isn’t. So I want to say that at the outset. I want to also use the example of what’s happening in the Vatican and with the pope as, surprisingly, another space where there’s been real forward momentum. Some of you may have seen that in January of this year Pope Francis gave a very public and widely distributed interview with the Associated Press where he said that sodomy laws are wrong, and that sodomy should be decriminalized around the world. And I see that Ruth just looked up startled at that point, so I think that’s an indication really of what a huge announcement it was. I also know that Pope Francis has been very intentional about meeting with members of the LGBTQI+ community, receiving information from parents of LGBTQI+ Catholics, and even meeting with transgender refugees from Latin America. In fact, he very famously gave grants for transgender women from Latin America found themselves as refugees in Italy and were really impacted severely by COVID. And he not only heard their case, he made a grant, and then he made it public that he made a grant to them. So these are very strong indications of an evolving position, at least of the pope. And of course, everyone heard the news, which I think broke yesterday, of the pope’s response to questions from four or five conservative Catholic theologians on the eve of the Synod. And his announcement, his response in great detail, was—he was asked about equal marriage and its place within the Catholic Church. And while he didn’t go so far as to say there’s a place for equal marriage, in fact he condemned it, he said that blessing LGBTQI+ relationships do have a place in the Catholic Church. And I’ve spoken with a lot of Catholics over the past day, and a lot of tears of joy have been shed in response to that historic decision. So there’s a lot of progress happening. And, Katherine, just to get to your question, what does the U.N. strategy look like? Even the concept of family has become so politicized. We’re currently in a fight over the definition of family at the U.N. in the Human Rights Council right now. The crux of the fight is: Is there one form of the family or are there many forms of the family? Now, we all know the truth is there are many forms of the family. There are single-parent families, there are grandparents that take care of their grandchildren, there are families that live with intergenerational households, there are straight families, there are queer families. It takes all kinds. What is the strategy at the U.N.? It’s layered, but one of the strategies is to lift up the—lift up the voices of governments and activists from the Global South. And part of the reason why that’s so incredibly important is because there’s a myth that spread at the United Nations that only LGBTQI—the only governments that care about LGBTQI rights are in the Global North. And that’s simply not the case. So it is probably a longer conversation than we have time for with four minutes left, but I think that’s one of the most important strategies. And I will also add, we need leadership from the secretary-general and all U.N. agencies on this issue. MESSINGER: No, I mean, it’s—you know, it’s the endless story for the last half-century of the United Nations is, like, when in some instances does it actually—I mean, a Katherine knows this better than anybody—but is actually leading international battles for justice and equity, and when is it sort of trailing behind, you know, its own its own countries, its own naysayers. Jessica, we don’t have much time left. So I wanted to ask you to say how now—now, obviously, some of the people who are online with us are doing this also pretty much full-time in their organizations, but many are not. And what would you say about how people can be better allies to the global movement for LGBTI+ rights? STERN: I would say two things. Do no harm. But do something. So the first principle of, you know, good foreign policy is don’t make things worse for the people who you’re trying to help. I think that should make sense. We’ve seen efforts where international solidarity has gone awry because local communities, local leaders were not consulted. So please, always consult LGBTQI activists and thinkers at the country level. And the second piece is so important. I sometimes see paralysis around LGBTQI+ issues, where people care but they’re so afraid of getting it wrong. They don’t know where to start. They think it’s overwhelming. But you can make progress if you ask LGBTQI+ persons, what is the low-hanging fruit? What is the long-term strategy? And how can we help? So it’s actually quite simple: Do no harm, but do something. MESSINGER: That’s beautifully said. And I would just add to that the point that where we totally dovetail on that is that the work AJWS is very often in these countries where national policy is bad and national policy may be getting worse. But where there always turn out to be LGBTI+ groups—some of them, like, unbelievably beleaguered and literally hiding. But even when they’re hiding, they know exactly what they need. And sometimes they need support. Sometimes they just need recognition. Sometimes—to complete the interface in this webinar—sometimes, we need to bring those groups and those countries to the attention of the State Department because they are the leaders in the fight for equity and they deserve some attention and recognition, as well as our financial support. And I would also just say that, you know, some of these groups should just be praised when talking about doing something, because they do the most basic thing. And that is that they give LGBTQI+ people a place to literally hang out. We have a staff member of ours, you can find it on—the AJWS website is AJWS.org. And it lists the work that we do. And as I said, these groups are in our sexual health and rights portfolio. You can find descriptions of a lot of these groups. They’re just wonderful. But a member—a new member of our staff actually traveled recently to Africa to see some of our work. And one of the things that he said, remembering his own past as a young gay person, was in the same way that being on Fire Island meant something to him because it was a safe space, he sees in every one of the groups of ours that he visited throughout the globe that one of the things they do is simply provide a safe space for other LGBTQI people to be with each other, to get some support, to be able to gather strength and resilience for going out into the, literally and figuratively, the streets of their countries to try to function in a place in which their fundamental human rights are not protected. So I want to thank Jessica. Not—I want to thank her for her hour talking with us and answering questions, but I really want to thank her for doing this work, day-in and day-out. Not only as a—as a—through her career, but doing it right now in government and the State Department, that for many, many, many reasons, has, like, lots and lots of other issues and priorities. We were talking before the call as to whether or not the government will be open when Jessica came on the call. But she takes up a fundamental issue. And I think she’s made it clear how fundamental it is of human rights in countries around the world and makes that a key piece of the policy and practice of the U.S. State Department and the U.S. government. And she deserves our thanks for that. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. And I just want to echo those thanks from the Council on Foreign Relations, Jessica Stern, for all your work in this space and for being with us today; and of course, Ruth Messinger, for navigating this conversation. I’m sorry, we could not get to all the questions, but we will just have to have another discussion on these issues, which are so important. We encourage you to follow the State Department’s work, Jessica’s department at the State Department on Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on X. It’s at @StateDRL. And you can follow Ruth at @Ruth_Messinger. And so we look forward to continuing the conversation. And thank you both again for today’s really rich conversation. We appreciate it. MESSINGER: Thank you, Irina, and thank you to the Council. STERN: Thank you to Ruth, Irina, and the Council. And thank you all for tuning in. END

Josh Franklin, senior rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, and Noreen Herzfeld, professor of theology and computer science at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, discuss how AI is affecting religious communities and the relationship between science, technology, and religion. Johana Bhuiyan, senior tech reporter and editor for the Guardian, moderated.  Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar Series, hosted by the Religion and Foreign Policy Program. This series explores social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on CFR’s websites, CFR.org, and on the Apple podcast channel Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Johana Bhuiyan with us to moderate today’s discussion on religion and AI. Johana Bhuiyan is the senior tech reporter and editor at the Guardian, where she focuses on the surveillance of disenfranchised groups. She has been reporting on tech and media since 2013 and previously worked at the L.A. Times, Vox Media, Buzzfeed News and Politico New York. And she attended Lehigh University where she studied journalism as well as global and religion studies. She’s going to introduce our panelists, have the discussion, and then we’re going to invite all of you to ask your questions and share your comments. So thank you, Johana. Over to you. BHUIYAN: Thank you so much, Irina. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. As Irina said, my name is Johana Bhuiyan, and I cover all the ways tech companies infringe on your civil liberties. And so today we’ll be talking about a topic that’s not completely unrelated to that but is a little bit of a tangent. But we’re talking about “Religion and AI.” And AI is unfortunately a term that suffers from both being loosely defined and often misused. And so I kind of want to be a little bit specific before we begin. For the most part my feeling is this conversation will focus on a lot of generative AI tools and the way that these play a role in religious communities and play a role for faith leaders, and some of the issues and concerns with that. That being said, if the conversation goes in that direction, I will take it there. I would love to also touch on sort of the religious communities’ roles in thinking about and combating the harms of other forms of AI as well. But again, we’ll be focusing largely on generative AI. And today with us we have two really wonderful panelists who come from various perspectives on this. Both are really well-versed in both theology, of course, as well as artificial intelligence and computer science. First, we have Rabbi Josh Franklin, who wrote a sermon with ChatGPT that you may have read in news articles, including one of mine. He is a senior rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, and he co-writes a bimonthly column in Dan’s Papers called “Hamptons Soul,” which discusses issues of spirituality and justice in the Hamptons. He received his ordination at Hebrew Union College and was the recipient of the Daniel and Bonnie Tisch Fellowship, a rabbinical program exploring congregational studies, personal theology, and contemporary religion in North America. And we also have Noreen Herzfeld, who most recently published a book titled The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic World. That was published by Fortress, so go out and get a copy. She is the Nicholas and Bernice Reuter professor of science and religion at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, where she teaches courses on the intersection of religion and technology. Dr. Herzfeld holds degrees in computer science and mathematics from Pennsylvania State University and a PhD in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Thank you both so much for having this conversation with me. FRANKLIN: Thank you for having us. BHUIYAN: I do want to set the stage a little bit. I don’t want to assume anyone has a very thorough knowledge of all the ways AI has sort of seeped into our religious communities. And, in particular people when they think of ChatGPT and other chatbots like that, they’re not necessarily thinking of, OK, well, how is it used in a sermon? And how is it used in a mosque? Or how is it used in this temple? So, we’ve had the one-off situations like, Rabbi Franklin, your sermon. But I think it’d be great to get an idea of how else you’ve been seeing chatbot and other—ChatGPT and other chatbots using both of your respective worlds and communities. One example I can give before I turn it over is that there was a very short-lived chat bot called HadithGPT, which purportedly would answer questions about Islam based on Hadiths, which is the the life and saying of the Prophet, peace be upon him. But immediately the community was like, one, this is really antithetical to the rich, scholarly tradition of Islam. Two, the questions that people might be asking can’t only be answered by Hadiths. And, three, chatbots are not very good at being accurate. And so the people behind it immediately shut it down. I want to turn it over to, Rabbi Franklin, you first. Is there a version of HadithGPT in the Jewish community? Are you still using ChatGPT to write sermons? Or what other use cases are you seeing? FRANKLIN: I actually did see a version of some kind of parallel within the Jewish world to HadithGPT. It was RabbiGPT, something along those lines. But actually, Google has done a great job already for years answering very trivial questions about Judaism. So if you want to know, where does this particular quote come from in the Torah, and you type it into Google, and you get the answer. And if you want to know how many times you shake the lulav, this traditional plant that we shake on Sukkot, you can find that on Google. ChatGPT, the same in terms of purveying information and actually generating trivial content or answering trivial questions, yeah. That far surpasses any rabbi’s ability, really. It’s a dictionary or encyclopedia of information. But religion goes far beyond answering simple questions. We’re asking major questions, ultimate questions about the nature of life, that I don’t think artificial intelligence is quite there yet. But when you get into the philosophical, the ethical, the moral, the emotional, that’s when you start to see the breakdown in terms of the capabilities of how far artificial intelligence can really answer these kinds of questions. BHUIYAN: Right. And I do want to come back to that, but I first want to go to Noreen. I mentioned that the immediate reaction to HadithGPT was, OK, this is antithetical to the scholarly tradition within Islam. But is there actually a way that religious scholars and religious researchers, or people who are actually trying to advance their knowledge about a particular faith, are using ChatGPT and other chatbots to actually do that in a useful and maybe not scary and harmful way? (Laughs.) HERZFELD: Well, I’m in academia. And so, of course, ChatGPT has been a big issue among professors as we think about, are our students going to be using this to do their assignments? And there’s a lot of disagreement on whether it makes any sense to use it or not. I think right now, there’s some agreement that the programs can be helpful in the initial stages. So if you’re just brainstorming about a topic, whether you’re writing an academic paper, or writing a homily, or even preparing for, let’s say, a church youth group or something, it can be helpful if you say, give me some ideas about this topic, or give me some ideas for this meeting that we’re going to have. But when it comes to a more finished product, that’s the point where people are saying, wow, now you have to really be careful. Within the Christian tradition there are now generative AI programs that supposedly explicate certain verses or pericopes in the Bible. But they tend to go off on tangents. Because they work stochastically in just deciding what word or phrase should come next, they’ll attribute things to being in the Bible that aren’t there. And so, right now I think we have to warn people to be extremely careful. There have been earlier AIs. Like Germany had a robot called BlessU-2. And if someone asked it for a prayer about a particular situation, it would generate a prayer. If someone asked it for a Bible verse that might fit a particular setting, it actually would come out with a real Bible verse. But I think a lot of people—and this goes back to something Josh said, or something that you said about the Hadith—the Christian tradition is an extremely embodied tradition. When you go to mass, you eat bread, you drink wine, you smell incense, you bow down and stand up. The whole body is a part of the worship. And that’s an area that AI, as something that is disembodied, that’s only dealing with words, it can’t catch the fullness. I think one would find the same thing in Muslim tradition, where you’re prostrating yourself, you’re looking to the right and the left. It's all involving the whole person, not just the mental part. FRANKLIN: Yeah, I’d phrase some of that a little bit differently in terms of the biggest lacking thing about AI is definitely the sense of spirituality that AI can generate. And I think part of the reason that is, is that spirituality has to do with feeling more than it does data. Whereas AI can think rationally, can think in terms of data, and it can actually give you pseudo-conclusions that might sound spiritual, at the end of the day spirituality is something that is really about ineffability. That is, you can’t use words to describe it. So when you have a language model or generative language model that’s trying to describe something that’s really a feeling, that’s really emotional, that’s really a part of the human experience, even the best poets struggle with this. So maybe AI will get better at trying to describe something that, up until now, has very much been about emotion and feeling. But at the end of the day, I really don’t think that artificial intelligence can understand spirituality nor describe spirituality. And it definitely can’t understand it, because one of the things that AI lacks is the ability to feel. It can recognize emotion. And it can do a better job at recognizing emotion than, I think, humans can, especially in terms of cameras, being able to recognize facial expressions. Humans are notoriously bad at that. Artificial intelligence is very good at that. So it can understand what you might be feeling, but it can’t feel it with you. And that’s what genuine empathy is. That’s what religion is at its best, where it’s able to empathize with people within the community and be in sacred encounter and relationships with them. And although AI can synthesize a lot of these things that are extraordinarily meaningful for human encounter and experience, it’s not really doing the job of capturing the meat of it, of capturing really where religion and spirituality excel. BHUIYAN: Can I— HERZFELD: I’m sorry, but to underline the importance of emotion, when people talk about having a relationship with an AI, and especially expecting in the future to have close relationships with an AI, I often ask them: Well, would you like to have a relationship with a sociopath? And they’re like, well, no. And I said, but that’s what you’re going to get. Because the AI might do a good job of—you know, as Josh pointed out, it can recognize an emotion. And it can display an emotion if it’s a robot, or if there’s, let’s say, an avatar on a screen. But it doesn’t ever feel an emotion. And when we have people who don’t feel an emotion but might mentally think, oh, but what is the right thing to do in this situation, we often call those people sociopaths. Because they just don’t have the same empathetic circuit to feel your pain, to know what you’re going through. And coming back to embodiment, so often in that kind of situation what we need is a touch, or a hug, or just someone to sit with us. We don’t need words. And words are all the generative AI has. FRANKLIN: I would agree with you like 99.9 percent. There’s this great scene and Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together. I don’t know if you read it. HERZFELD: Yes. FRANKLIN: She talks about this nursing home where they have this experimental—some kind of a pet that would just kind of sit with you. It was a robotic pet that would just make certain sounds that would be comforting, that a pet would make. And that people found it so comforting. They felt like they had someone to listen to, that was responding to what they were saying, although it really wasn’t. It was synthetic. And Sherry Turkle, who’s this big person in the tech world, it automatically kind of transformed her whole perspective on what was going on in such an encounter. And she transformed her perspective on technology based on this one little scene that she saw in this nursing home. Because it was sociopathic, right? This doesn’t have actual emotion. It’s faking it, and you can’t be in legitimate relationship with something that isn’t able to reciprocate emotion. It might seem like it. And I know, Noreen, I asked you a question a little earlier—before we got started with this—about Martin Buber, who I do want to bring up. Martin Buber wrote this book exactly 100 years ago, I and Thou, which at the time really wasn’t all that influential, but became very influential in the field of philosophy. And Martin Buber talks about encounter that we have with other individuals. He says most of our transactions that we have between two people are just that, transactional. You go to the store, you buy something, you give them cash, they give you money back, and you leave. But that’s an I-it encounter. That person is a means to an end. But when you’re really engaged with another human being in relationship, there’s something divine, something profound that’s happening. And he says, through that encounter, you experience God, or that spark that’s within that encounter, that’s God. And I have changed my tune during the age of COVID and being so much on Zoom, to say that, actually, I do believe you can have an encounter with another individual on Zoom. That was a stretch for me. I used to think no, no, you can’t do that, unless you have that touch, you have that presence, that physical presence, maybe even through some kind of being with another human being. But in terms of having encounter with artificial intelligence, no matter how much it might be able to synthesize the correct response, it can’t actually be present because it’s not conscious. And that’s a major limitation in terms of our ability to develop relationships or any kind of encounter with something that’s less than human. HERZFELD: Yeah. It seems to fake consciousness, but it doesn’t actually have the real thing. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth said that to have a truly authentic relationship you need four things. And those were to look the other in the eye, to speak to and hear the other, to aid the other, and to do it gladly. And the interesting thing about those four, I mean, to look the other in the eye, that doesn’t mean that a blind person cannot have an authentic relationship. But it is to recognize the other is fully other and to recognize them as fully present. To speak to and hear the other, well, you know, AI is actually pretty good at that. And to aid the other—computers aid us all the time. They do a lot of good things. But then you get to the last one, to do it gladly. And I think there is the real crux of the matter, because to do it gladly you need three things. You need consciousness, you need free will, and you need emotion. And those three things are the three things that AI really lacks. So far, we do not have a conscious AI. When it comes to free will, well, how free really is a computer to do what it’s programmed to do. And then can it do anything gladly? Well, we’ve already talked about it not having emotion. So it cannot fulfill that last category. FRANKLIN: Yeah, it does it almost so well. And I really say “almost.” We really do confuse intelligence and consciousness quite often. In fact, AI can accomplish a lot of the tasks that we accomplish emotionally through algorithms. Now it’s kind of like a submarine can go underwater without gills, but it’s not a fish. It’s accomplishing the same thing but it’s not really the same thing. It’s not living. It doesn’t have anything within it that enables us to be in relationship with it. And that is—yeah, I love that—those four criteria that you mentioned. Those are really great and helpful. HERZFELD: And you just mentioned that it’s not living. When you were talking about the pet in the nursing home, I was thinking, well, there are degrees of relationality. I can be soothed by a beautiful bouquet that somebody brings if I’m in the hospital, let’s say, just looking at the flowers. And certainly everyone knows now that we lower our blood pressure if we have a pet, a cat or a dog, that we can stroke. And yet, I feel like I have a certain degree of relationship with my dog that I certainly don’t have with the flowers in my garden, because the dog responds. And sometimes the dog doesn’t do what I tell her to. She has free will. There’s another story in that same book by Sherry Turkle where instead of giving the patient in the nursing home this robotic seal, they give them a very authentic-looking robotic baby. And what was really sad in that story was that one of the women so took to this robotic baby, and to cradling it and taking care of it, that she ignored her own grandchild who had come to visit her. And Sherry Turkle said at that point she felt like we had really failed. We had failed both the grandchild and the grandmother. And that’s where I think we fail. One of the questions that keeps bedeviling me is what are we really looking for when we look for AI? Are we looking for a tool or are we looking for a partner? In the Christian tradition, St. Augustine said, “Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” I think that we are made to want to be in relationship, deep relationship, with someone other to ourselves, someone that is not human. But as we live in a society where we increasingly don’t believe in God, don’t believe in angels, don’t believe in the presence of the saints, we’re looking for a way to fill that gap. And I think for many people who are not religious, they’re looking towards AI to somehow fill this need to be in an authentic relationship with an other. BHUIYAN: And we’re talking a lot about sort of that human connection. And, Noreen, you said this in your book, that AI is an incomplete partner and a terrible surrogate for other humans. And it sounds like both of you agree that there is not a world where AI, in whatever form, could sufficiently replace—or even come close to replacing that human connection. But on a practical note Rabbi Franklin, you mentioned Rabbi Google. You know, a lot of faith practices are incredibly, to reuse the word, practice-centric, right? That that is the building block of the spirituality. Within the Muslim community, of course, right, the five daily prayers. There’s a version of this in many different faith practices. And so if people are seeking answers about the practical aspect of their spirituality from a tool even if they’re thinking, yeah, this is a tool. Trust, but verify. If they’re seeking those answers from this tool that has a tendency to hallucinate or make mistakes, is there a risk that they will over-rely on this particular tool, and then that tool can create sort of a friction between them and the community? Because, I’ll admit it, as someone who practices a faith and also is well-versed in the issues with Google and the misinformation that it can surface, I will still Google a couple—(inaudible). I will turn to Google and be, like: How do I do this particular prayer? I haven’t done it in a very, very long time. And of course, I’m looking through and trying to make sure that the sources are correct. But not everyone is doing that. Not everyone is going through with a fine-tooth comb. And ChatGPT, given how almost magical it feels to a lot of people, there is even less of a likelihood that they will be questioning it. And it is getting more and more sophisticated. So it’s harder to question. So is there a concern within religious communities that this tool will become something that will create even one more obstacle between a person and their faith leader, or their clergy, or their local scholars? FRANKLIN: I don’t seem that worried about it. I think what synagogues and faith-based communities do is something that’s really irreplicable by ChatGPT. We create community. We create shared meaningful experience with other people. And there is a sense that you need physical presence in order to be able to do that. Having said that, yeah, I use ChatGPT as a tool. I think other people will use it too. And it will help a lot with how do you get the information that you need in a very quick, accessible way? Sometimes it’s wrong. Sometimes it makes mistakes. I’ll give you an example of that. I was asking ChatGPT, can you give me some Jewish texts from Jewish literature on forgiveness? And it gives me this text about the prodigal son. And I typed right back in, and I said: That’s not a Jewish text. That’s from the Gospels. And it says, oh, you’re right. I made a mistake. It is from the Gospels. It’s not a Jewish text. I actually thought the most human thing that it did in that whole encounter was admit that it was wrong. Maybe that’s a lack of human—because human beings have an inability often to admit that we were wrong, but I actually love the fact that it admitted, oh, I made a mistake, and it didn’t double down on its mistake. It’s learning and it’s going to get better. I think if we measure artificial intelligence by its current form, we’re really selling it short for what it is going to be and how intelligent it actually is. And, by the way, I think it is extraordinarily intelligent, probably more intelligent than any of us. But we have human qualities that artificial intelligence can never really possess. And I think the main one, which we already touched on, is the idea of consciousness. And I think the experiences that you get within a faith-based community are those experiences that specifically relate to human consciousness and not relate to human—not developing intelligence. People don’t come to synagogue to get information. I hope they go to ChatGPT or Google for that. That’s fine. People come to synagogue to feel something more within life, something beyond the trivial, something that they can’t get by reading the newspaper, that they can’t get by going on Google. It’s a sense of community, a sense of relationship. And so I don’t think that there can be a way that artificial intelligence is going to distract from that. Yeah, I guess it’s possible, but I’m not too worried about it. BHUIYAN: And—go ahead, Noreen, yeah. HERZFELD: I was just going to say, I think you need to be a little careful when you say it’s more intelligent than we are. Because there are so many different kinds of intelligence. FRANKLIN: Yes. IQ intelligence, let me qualify. HERZFELD: If intelligence is just having immediate access to a lot of facts, great, yeah. It’s got access we don’t have. But if intelligence is having, first of all, emotional intelligence, which we’ve already discussed. But also just having models of the world. This is often where these large language models break down, that they don’t have an interior model of the world and the way things work in the world, whether that’s the physical world or the social world. And so they’re brittle around the edges. If something hasn’t been discussed in the texts that has been trained on, it can’t extrapolate from some kind of a basic model, mental model that—which is the way we do things when we encounter something brand new. So, in that sense, it’s also lacking something that we have. BHUIYAN: There’s a question from the audience that I think is a good one, because it sounds to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that, Noreen, you in particular believe that the doomsday scenario that people are always talking about, where AI becomes sentient, takes over, is more—we become subservient to AI, is unlikely. And, OK. And so the question from the audience is that, it seems like most of the arguments are, we can tell the difference so AI won’t replace human connection. But what happens if and when AI does pass the Turing test? Is that something that you see as a realistic scenario? HERZFELD: Oh, in a sense we could say AI has already passed the Turing test. If you give a person who isn’t aware that they’re conversing with ChatGPT sometime to converse with it, they might be fooled. Eventually ChatGPT will probably give them a wrong answer. But then, like Josh said, it’ll apologize and say, oh yeah, I was wrong. Sorry. So we could say that, in a sense, the Turing test has already been passed. I am not worried about the superintelligent being that’ll decide that it doesn’t need human beings, or whatever. But I’m worried about other things. I mean, I think in a way that that’s a red herring that distracts us from some of the things we really should be worried about. And that is that AI is a powerful tool that is going to be used by human beings to exert power over other human beings. Whether it’s by advertently or inadvertently building our biases into this tool so that the tool treats people in a different fashion. I’m also worried about autonomous weapons. They don’t need to be superintelligent to be very destructive. And a third thing that I’m worried about is climate change. And you might say, well, what has that got to do with AI? But these programs, like the large language models, like ChatGPT, take a great deal of power to train them. They take a great deal of power to use them. If you ask a simple question of ChatGPT instead of asking Google, you’re using five to ten times the electricity, probably generated by fossil fuels, to answer that question. So as we scale these models up, and as more and more people start using them more and more of the time, we are going to be using more and more of our physical resources to power it. And most of us don’t realize this, because we think, well, it all happens in the cloud. It’s all very clean, you know. This is not heavy industry. But it’s not. It’s happening on huge banks of servers. And just for an example, one of Microsoft’s new server farms in Washington state is using more energy per day than the entire county that it’s located in. So we just are not thinking about the cost that underlies using AI. It’s fine if just a few people are using it, or just using it occasionally. But if we expect to scale this up and use it all the time, we don’t have the resources to do that. BHUIYAN: Yeah, and you mentioned electricity. A couple of my coworkers have done stories about the general environmental impact. But it’s also water. A lot of these training models use quite a bit of water to power these machines. HERZFELD: To cool the machines, yeah. BHUIYAN: And so yeah, I’m glad that you brought that up, because that is something that I think about quite a bit, covering surveillance, right? Religious communities are this sort of, incredibly strong communities that can have a really huge social impact. And we’ve had various versions of AI for a very, very long time that have harmed some religious communities, other marginalized groups. You mentioned a couple of them. Surveillance is one of them. There’s also things that feel a little bit more innocuous but there’s bias and discrimination built into them like hiring algorithms, mortgage lending algorithms, algorithms to decide whether someone should qualify for bail or not. And so my general question is, is there a role that religious communities can play in trying to combat those harms. How much education should we be doing within our communities to make sure people are aware that it’s not just the fun quirky tool that will answer your innocuous question. AI is also powering a lot more harmful and very damaging tools as well. FRANKLIN: I’d love for religious leaders to be a part of the ethics committees that sit at the top of how AI decides certain decisions that are going to be a part of everyday real life. So, for example, when your self-driving car is driving down the road and a child jumps out in the middle of the street your car has to either swerve into oncoming traffic, killing the driver, or hit the child. Who’s going to decide how the car behaves, how the artificial intelligence behaves? I think ethics are going to be a huge role that human beings need to take in terms of training AI and I think religious leaders as well as ethicists, philosophers, really need to be at the head, not the lay leadership programmers or the lay programmers. Not the lay but they’re not really trained in ethics and philosophy and spirituality, for that matter, and religion. I really think that we need to be taking more of an active role in making sure that the ethical discussions of the programming of artificial intelligence have some kind of strong ethical basis because I think the biggest danger is who’s sitting in the driver’s seat. Not in the car scenario but, really, who’s sitting in the driver’s seat of the programming. BHUIYAN: Noreen, do you have anything to add onto that? HERZFELD: No, I very much agree with that. I do think that if we leave things up to the corporations that are building these programs the bottom line is going to be what they ultimately consult. I know that at least one car company—I believe it’s Mercedes-Benz—has publicly said that in the scenario that Josh gave the car is going to protect the driver. No matter how many children jump in front of the car the car will protect the driver and the real reason is that they feel like, well, who’s going to buy a car that wouldn’t protect the driver in every situation. If you had a choice between a car that would always protect the driver and a car that sometimes would say, no, those three kids are more valuable— FRANKLIN: And that’s a decision made by money, not made by ethics. HERZFELD: Exactly. FRANKLIN: Yeah. BHUIYAN: Right. Rabbi Franklin, I have a question. There’s a good follow-up in the audience. Are there ethics committees that you know of right now that are dealing with this issue, and then the question from the audience from Don Frew is how do we get those religious leaders into those committees. FRANKLIN: We have to be asked, in short, in order to be on those committees. I don’t know if it’s on the radar even of these corporations who are training AI models. But I think there are going to be very practical implications coming up in the very near future where we do need to be involved in ethical discussions. But there are religious leaders who sit on all sorts of different ethics committees but as far as I know there’s nothing that’s set up specifically related to AI. That doesn’t mean there isn’t. I just don’t know of any. But, if you were to ask me, right now we’ve seen articles about the decline of humanities in college and universities. I would actually say that humanities is—if I had to make a prediction is probably going to make a comeback because these ethical, philosophical, spiritual questions are going to be more relevant than ever, and if you’re looking at programming and law and the medical industry and medicine those are actually things where AI is going to be more aggressive and playing a larger role in doing the things that humans are able to do. BHUIYAN: Right. I do want to bring the question or the conversation back to, you know, religion, literally. In your book, Noreen, you bring up a question that I thought was just so fascinating, whether we should be deifying AI and it sounds like the short answer is no. But my fascination with it is how realistic of a risk is that, and I know there’s one example that I just knew off the top of my head was the Church of AI, which has been shut down and was started by a former Google self-driving engineer who was later pardoned for stealing trade secrets. His name is Anthony Levandowski. So, yeah, take what he says with a grain of salt, I guess is what I’m saying. But the church was created to be dedicated to, quote, “The realization, acceptance, and worship of a godhead based on AI developed through computer hardware and software.” Is this a fluke? Is this a one off? Do you think there’s, like, a real risk of as AI gets more sophisticated people will be sort of treating it as, like, a kind of god like, I don’t know, figure, if that’s the right word, but some sort of god? FRANKLIN: It sounds like a gimmick to me. I mean, look, it’s definitely going to capture the media headlines for sure. You do something new and novel like that no matter how ridiculous it is people are going to write about it, and it’s not surprising that it failed because it didn’t really have a lot of substance. At least I hope the answer is no, that that’s not going to be a real threat or that’s not going to be a major concern. Who knows? I mean, I really think that human beings are bad at predicting the future. Maybe AI will be better at predicting the future than we are. But my sense, for what it’s worth, is that no, that’s not really a concern. HERZFELD: Well, I would be a little more hesitant to say it’s not any type of a concern. I do not think there are going to be suddenly a lot of churches like the one you mentioned springing up in which people deify AI with the same sorts of ways in which we’ve worshipped God. But, we worship a lot of stuff. We worship money all too often. We worship power. And we can easily worship AI if we give it too much credence. If we really believe that everything it says is true, that what it does is the pinnacle of what human beings do and this is what worries me is that if we say, well, it’s all about intelligence, I’ve often thought, well, we’re trying to make something in our own image and what we’re trying to give it is intelligence. But is that the most important thing that human beings do? I think in each of our religious traditions we would say the most important thing that human beings do is love and that this is something that it can’t do. So my worry is that—because in some ways we’re more flexible than machines are and as the machines start to surround us more, as we start to interact with them more we’re going to, in a sense, make ourselves over in their image and in that way we are sort of deifying it because when we think about—in the Christian tradition we talk about deification as the process of growing in the image and likeness of God, and if instead we grow in the image and likeness of the computer that’s another way of deifying the computer. BHUIYAN: I want to turn it over to audience questions; there are some hands raised. So I want to make sure that we get some of them in here as well. OPERATOR: Thank you. We will take the next question from Rabbi Joe Charnes. CHARNES: I appreciate that there are potential benefits from AI. That’s simply undeniable. The question I have is and the concern that I have that I think you certainly both share and I don’t know the way around it is as humans we do often relate to human beings. That’s our goal in life. That’s our purpose. But human relationships are often messy and it’s easier to relate to disembodied entities or objects, and I see people in the religious world relating now through Zoom. Through their Zoom sessions they have church so they’re relating to church and God through a screen, and when you speak of ethics and spirituality, Rabbi, of somehow imposing that or placing that into this AI model I don’t see how you can do that and I do fear we lean—if there’s a way out of human connection but modeling human connection to some extent I do fear we’re going to really go in that direction because it’s less painful. FRANKLIN: So I’ll try to address that. There’s a great book that’s going to sound like it’s completely unrelated to this topic. It’s by Johann Hari and the book is called Chasing the Scream. What he argues is that, generally, addiction is not about being the opposite of sobriety. Addiction is about being disconnected from other individuals and using the substance or a thing as a proxy for a relationship that we have with other people. Love that idea. I think there is a huge danger that artificial intelligence can be just that, the proxy for human relationship when we’re lonely, when we’re disconnected from others, and it’s going to be the thing that we are going to turn to. I would even echo Noreen’s fear that we end up turning to AI in very inappropriate ways and making it almost idolatrous, that when we say deifying it what we’re really doing is idol worshipping AI as something that really won’t actually give you the connection even though you think that it will. I think that’s a very legitimate fear. Having said that, I think that AI is going to be a great tool for the future if it’s used as a tool. Yes, there are tremendous amount of dangers with new technology and newness. Every single new innovation, every single revolutionary change technologically has come with huge dangers and AI is no different. I hope we’re going to be able to figure out how to really put the correct restrictions on it, how to really make sure that the ethics of AI has involvement from spiritual leaders and ethicists and philosophers. Am I confident that we’ll be able to do that? I don’t know. I think we’re still at the very beginning stages of things and we’ll see how it develops. HERZFELD: Two areas that I worry about because these are areas that people are particularly looking at AI are the development of sex bots, which is happening, and the use of AI as caregivers either for children or for the elderly. But particularly for the elderly this is an area that people are looking at very strongly. I think for religious leaders the best thing that you can do is to try to make sure that the people in your congregation—to do everything you can to foster the relationships among the people because as Josh was saying, we’ll use this as a substitute if we don’t have the real thing. But if we are in good and close and caring relationships with other human beings then the computer will not be enticing as a substitute and we might merely use it as a tool or just not bother with it at all. So I think what we really need to do is tend to the fostering of those relationships and particularly for those that are marginalized in some ways, whether it’s the elderly, whether it’s parents with children, particularly single parents who might be needing help, and whether it’s those that are infirm in some way. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Ani Zonneveld of Muslims for Progressive Values. ZONNEVELD: Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. You had raised that question, Johana, about what are the faith communities doing or can contribute to a better aggregated response on AI and I just wanted to share that members of our community has been creating images of, for example, women leading prayer in Muslim communities. So that those are some of the aggregated information that could be filtered up into the way AI is being used as a tool. So I think, at the end of the day, the AI system works as an aggregate of pulling in information that’s already out there and I think it’s important for us in the faith communities to create the content itself from which the AI can pull, and that also overcomes some of the biases, particularly the patriarchal interpretations of faith traditions, for example, right? The other thing I wanted to also share with everyone is that there’s a real interest in it at the United Nations. That is being led by an ethics professor from the university in Zurich. I taught a master’s ethics class there as a person of faith and so there’s this international database system agency that is being created at the UN level. Just thought I would share that with everyone. Thanks. FRANKLIN: Thank you. HERZFELD: And I would also share that the Vatican is working on this as well. I am part of a committee that’s part of the dicastery of culture and education and we’ve just put together a book on AI and the Pope is going to be using his address on January 1 on the Day of World Peace to address AI as a topic. FRANKLIN: I’m pretty sure rabbis across the country right now are going to be writing sermons for tomorrow, which begins Rosh Hashanah, our high holiday season, and many rabbis—most rabbis, perhaps—are going to be preaching about AI. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Shaik Ubaid from the Muslim Peace Coalition. UBAID: Thank you for the opportunity. Can you hear me? BHUIYAN: Yes. UBAID: Overall, we are sort of sort of putting down AI because it does not have the human qualities of empathy. But if instead of that we focus on using it as a tool whether in educating the congregations or jurisprudence then we would be using it. When it comes to the human quality, another quality is courage. We may have the empathy, but many times we do not show the courage. For example, we see pogroms going on in India and an impending genocide. But whether it be the—a (inaudible) chief or the chief rabbi of Israel or the Vatican, they do not say a word to Modi, at least publicly, to put pressure, and same with the governments in the West. And sometimes their mouthpieces in the U.S. are even allowed to come and speak at respectable fora, including sometimes even in CFR. So instead of expecting too much from the AI we should use it with its limitations and sometimes the bias and the arrogance that we show thinking that we are humans, of course, we are superior to any machine. But many times we fail ourselves. So if the machines are failing us that should not be too much of a factor. Thank you. FRANKLIN: Very well said. HERZFELD: Yeah. BHUIYAN: There are other audience questions that sort of build on that. We’re talking about humans having bias and our own thoughts sort of being a limiting factor for us. But, obviously, these machines and tools are being built by humans who have biases that may be and putting them into the training models. And so one of the questions or one of the topics that Frances Flannery brought up is the ways in which AI is circumventing our critical thinking. We talked about over reliance on these tools within the faith practice but is there—beyond that, right? We talked about AI when it comes to very practical things like these practices that we do. I understand it doesn’t replace the community and it doesn’t replace these spaces where we’re seeking community. But people are asking questions that are much more complex and are not trivial and are not just the fundamentals of the religion. Is there a concern with people using chat bots in place of questioning particular things or trying to get more knowledge about more complex topics? FRANKLIN: I would actually just kind of respond by saying that I don’t think AI circumvents critical thinking. I actually think it focuses us to think more critically, and by getting rid of the trivial things and the trivial data points and rational kind of stuff that AI can actually do and piece together and solve even just complex IQ-related issues it focuses us to think about more critical issues in terms of philosophy, in terms of faith and spirituality and theology, all things that I think AI might be able to parrot. But it can’t actually think creatively and original thoughts. So I actually think that AI gets rid of the dirty work, the summaries of what other people have said, maybe even generating two ideas together. But really true creativity, I think, is in the human domain and it’s going to force us to think more creatively. Maybe I’m just an optimist on that but that’s my sense. HERZFELD: And I’ll give the more pessimistic side, which is not to say—I mean, I believe that everything that Josh just said is correct. My concern is that we might end up using AI as a way to evade responsibility or liability. In other words, if decisions are made—Johana, you were talking earlier about how we use AI to decide who gets bail, who gets certain medical treatments, these things, and if we simply say, well, the computer made a decision and we don’t think critically about whether that was the right decision or whether the computer took all things into account I think we need to think about the same thing when we look at autonomous weapons, which are really coming down the pike, and that is how autonomous do we really want them to be. We can then, in a way, put some of the responsibility for mistakes that might be made on the battlefield onto the computer. But in what sense can we say a computer is truly responsible? So I do fear that as long as we use it as a component in our decision-making, which I think is what Josh was saying, this can be a powerful tool. But when we let it simply make the decision—and I’ve talked to generals who are worried about the fact that if we automate warfare too much the decision—the pace of warfare may get to be so fast that it’s too fast for human decision-makers to actually get in there and make real decisions and that’s a point where we’ve then abdicated something that is fully our responsibility and given it to the machine. FRANKLIN: Let’s not forget, though, how strong human biases are. I mean, read Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow and you’ll see all these different heuristics for human bias that are unbelievable. Going to the realm of bail, there was a study that showed that judges who haven’t had their lunch yet are much more likely to reject bail than those who just came out of their lunch break. I mean, talk about biases that exist in terms of the ways that we make decisions. I would say that ultimately although there are biases that we implant within these algorithms that will affect the way that outcomes actually come out probably artificial intelligence and these algorithms are going to do a better job than human beings alone. Having said that, to echo Noreen, when we use them in tandem with human decision-making I think we get the best of both worlds. BHUIYAN: Right. I mean, there are so many examples. Forget warfare and other places. I mean, in policing it happens all the time, right? There’s facial recognition tools that are intended to be used as sort of a lead generator or something that—a tool in an investigation. But we’ve seen time and again that it’s being used as the only tool, the only piece of evidence that then leads to the arrest and false incarceration of many, often black, people. And, again, to both of your points, it’s because of the human biases that these AI tools, particularly when used alone, are unable to—I mean, they’re just going to do what the human was going to do, too—the human with the bias was going to do as well. And I have seen in my reporting that there are a lot of situations where police departments or other law enforcement agencies will kind of use that as an excuse just like you said, Noreen, or sort of, like, well, the computer said, and they validated our data so it must be right. So I do think that there’s a little bit of the escape of liability and responsibility as well. We don’t have a ton more time and, Noreen, you talked a little bit about some of your major fears. Rabbi Franklin, you’re a little bit more optimistic about this than maybe Noreen or even I am. I would like to hear what your great fears of this tool are. FRANKLIN: My biggest fear is that it’s going to force me to change and, look, I think that’s a good thing, ultimately, but change is always really scary. I think I’m going to be a different rabbi five years from now, ten years from now than I am right now and I think AI is going to be one of the largest reasons for that. I think it’s going to force me to hone certain abilities that I have and really abandon and rely on artificial intelligence for other ones. And even going back to the original thought experiment that involved me in this conversation to begin with, which was using AI to write a sermon or ChatGPT to write a sermon at the very beginning of its infancy of ChatGPT, really, what a sermon looks like is going to be profoundly different. And it was part of one of the points that I was making when I actually delivered that original sermon. The only thing that was scripted was the part that was written by AI. Everything else was a conversation, back and forth questioning, engagement with the community who was there. I think sermons are going to look more like that, more like these kind of conversations than they will a scripted, written, and delivered words that come from a paper and are just spoken by a human being. Rabbis, preachers, imams, pastors, priests, are not going to be able to get away with that kind of homiletical approach. We’re going to have to really radically adapt and get better at being rabbis and clergy with different skill sets than we currently have, and that’s scary. But at the same time it’s exciting. BHUIYAN: And, Noreen, to end on a positive note, is there anything that you see that ChatGPT or other forms of generative AI or AI, broadly, what are some of the most positive ways that you see these tools being used in the future? HERZFELD: Well, we haven’t even mentioned tools that work with images is like DALL-E or Midjourney. But I think that those tools have sparked a new type of creativity in people, and I think if there’s a theme that goes through everything that the three of us have said today it’s a great tool, bad surrogate—that as long as we use this as a tool it can be a very good tool. But it’s when we try to use it as a complete replacement for human decision-making, for human courage, for human critical thinking, for human taking of responsibility, that we realize that just as we are flawed creatures we’ve created a flawed creature. But in each of our religious traditions I think we hold dear that what we need to do is love God and love each other and that we as religious people keep raising that up in a society that views things instrumentally. BHUIYAN: Thank you both. I am just going to turn it over to Irina now. FASKIANOS: Yes. Thank you all. This was a really provocative and insightful discussion. We really appreciate it. We encourage you to follow Rabbi Josh Franklin’s work on rabbijoshfranklin.com. Noreen Herzfeld is at @NoreenHerzfeld and Johana is at @JMBooyah—it’s B-O-O-Y-A-H—so on X, formally known as Twitter. And, obviously, you can follow Johana’s work in the Guardian. Please, I commend Noreen’s book to you. And please do follow us on Twitter at @CFR_religion for announcements and other information. And please feel free to email us at [email protected] with suggestions for future topics and feedback. We always look forward to hearing from you and soliciting your suggestions. So, again, thank you all for this great conversation. We appreciate your giving us your time today and we wish you a good rest of the day.