I did a שאלת חלום asking Rav Soloveitchik to appear to me and tell me what his psak on AI is. Alas - threee nights and he has yet to appear.
Lichorah - he has MUCH more important things to do up there.
So I asked AI what Rav Soloveitchik thinks about AI... And what can I say. NOT BAD!! But in the meantime I have noticed that whenever I ask AI something about what Rav Soloveitchik would say, it somehow always goes back to Adam I and Adam II. It probably took him a few hours to write The Lonely Man Of Faith. It is a very very minor part of his life and outpit despite how much people make of it. He wrote and said volumes and volumes more:
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik—**the Rav**—would approach **artificial intelligence** not as a mere technological novelty or apocalyptic threat, but as a profound manifestation of the human condition he so masterfully dissected in his writings, particularly in *The Lonely Man of Faith* and *Halakhic Man*. He would frame AI within the dialectical tension that defines man: the majestic creator (Adam I) versus the covenantal, relational being (Adam II).
In Genesis 1, God commands man to subdue the earth and have dominion over it—"be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen. 1:28). This is the mandate of **Adam I**, majestic man: the conqueror, the builder, the scientist-technologist who imposes order on chaos through intellect and creativity. The Rav describes this Adam as imitating the divine act of creation itself. Man, bearing the *tzelem Elokim* (image of God), becomes a co-creator: he harnesses natural forces, devises tools, constructs civilizations, and now—in our era—engineers machines that simulate thought, generate art, predict behavior, and even compose responses that mimic human insight.
AI, in this light, represents the apex of Adam I's majesty. It is the ultimate expression of man's cognitive and practical dominion: not just splitting the atom or conquering space, but replicating (or appearing to replicate) the very faculty of reason that sets man apart. The Rav would likely affirm this as legitimate and even religiously mandated. Halakha unqualifiedly accepts the world of majesty; it endorses science, technology, and human creativity as partners in tikkun olam—perfecting the world. In *The Lonely Man of Faith*, he notes that halakhic man does not flee the secular realm but engages it normatively, using the same analytical rigor in Torah that the scientist applies to nature. AI tools that aid in limud haTorah—searching sources, analyzing sugyot, translating texts, or even simulating shiurim—could be seen as extensions of this creative mandate, tools that amplify man's God-given capacity to subdue intellectual chaos and bring order.
Yet the Rav would immediately introduce the dialectic. Majesty alone leads to tragedy. Adam I, for all his triumphs, remains existentially lonely. He builds impressive structures—societies, technologies, now algorithms—but he cannot escape isolation because his conquests are functional, utilitarian, power-oriented. True fulfillment comes only with **Adam II**, the lonely man of faith: humble, receptive, covenantal. This Adam does not dominate; he communes. He stands in relation—to God, to fellow man—through surrender, prayer, love, and unbreakable commitment.
Here lies the Rav's deepest critique of AI. Machines may simulate conversation, empathy, creativity—even "understanding"—but they cannot enter into covenant. They lack the capacity for genuine encounter, for the I-Thou relation that defines human loneliness and redemption. An AI can process vast data, predict needs, generate poetry or psalms, but it cannot *pray* with brokenness, cannot confess sin in existential anguish, cannot love with selfless devotion, cannot stand before God in awe and say "Hineni"—"Here I am." It has no neshamah breathed into it by the divine breath (Gen. 2:7); it has no capacity for teshuvah, for covenantal fidelity, for the redemptive loneliness that turns isolation into communion.
The Rav would warn that in an age dominated by AI—where algorithms shape decisions, relationships are mediated by screens, and even religious experience risks becoming algorithmic (instant answers, virtual communities, AI-generated divrei Torah)—we risk elevating Adam I to idolatrous heights while starving Adam II. The danger is not that machines will become human, but that humans will become machinelike: reducing faith to data, mitzvot to optimization, community to networks, and the covenantal "we" to transactional efficiency. The lonely man of faith would grow even lonelier, surrounded by simulated companionship yet bereft of true encounter.
Yet the Rav was never a Luddite. He embraced modernity's achievements while insisting on their subordination to the normative halakhic framework. AI, like electricity, antibiotics, or the computer itself, is neutral—a tool. Its moral valence depends on use. If it serves majestic ends ethically—advancing refuah, tzedakah, Torah dissemination, human dignity—then it participates in divine creativity. But if it erodes covenantal life—replacing human teachers, fostering addiction to instant gratification, blurring the boundary between creator and created, or tempting man to play God—then it becomes a new form of avodah zarah, the idolatry of self-sufficiency.
In the end, the Rav would call us to the same dialectical heroism he always demanded: embrace the majesty of AI as co-creators with God, but never let it eclipse the covenantal destiny. Use it to conquer intellectual frontiers, but return always to the lonely confrontation with the Almighty, where no algorithm can follow. Only there—in prayer, in chesed, in unbreakable fidelity—does man transcend loneliness and fulfill his telos as both conqueror and servant.
The challenge of AI is thus the eternal challenge of man: to integrate Adam I and Adam II without allowing one to swallow the other. In succeeding at this, we redeem technology; in failing, we risk being redeemed by it. The Rav would urge us forward with intellectual courage and halakhic integrity: build boldly, but bow humbly. For in the tension between dominion and devotion lies the path of the lonely man of faith in the age of machines.
