Keeping AI Sacred

Newsletter May 26, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

When my grandma Kit (may her memory be a blessing), whose 105th birthday would have been today, was about 92 years old, I took her to her very first Korean BBQ restaurant. And she was totally up for it and loved it. It’s never too late to try new things.

I have always admired those who invent and reinvent themselves. They try new things. Learn new skills. Put themselves out there. And find new iterations of who they are.

My grandpa, around his 95th birthday, wrote a book for the Smithsonian on the US nuclear arsenal.

My paternal grandma took up synchronized swimming at her retirement home in her 80s.

The world is full of varied experiences, and a life well lived is one that tries new things. I think about Moses’ life beginning as a humble Hebrew, becoming a prince of Egypt, then a shepherd, an activist, and finally a leader of the people through the wilderness. I think of Rabbi Akiva who began as a fieldworker, and became a renowned rabbi. Or Reish Lakish who started life as a bandit to later become a renowned scholar. Maimonides was a poet, philosopher, physician, liturgist, and author.

Of course, we don’t have to be Moses or Rabbi Akiva or Reish Lakish or Maimonides to appreciate their example.

I have friends who have pivoted careers, and others who have learned new skills and parlayed them into advancements in their chosen fields.

In this spirit I applied to and was selected to participate in a Stanford University 6-week intensive course learning the coding language called Python. And this month, I will earn my certificate of completion. Why? To continue to build new tools for our global community. And help me realize the full potential of my rabbinate.

This was the first year that the program incorporated working with AI in their curriculum. And everywhere possible, I have taken the opportunity to discuss this fast-evolving technology with industry experts. Even outside of the Code-In Place course, I have discussed AI with a lawyer who specializes in AI international law, a designer of AI social media profiles, those who employ AI in meeting spaces, those teach AI in corporate settings, and those who run podcasts on AI. Yes, all in the past 6 weeks!

And my impressions? The tool is amazing and has many great possibilities. Guardrails also need to be put in place to make sure it is used responsibly and ethically. But the unexpected result of studying coding and working with AI is the fact that the new technology still needs smart, thoughtful, and responsible humans to interact with it. For instance, prompt engineers need to make sure the queries align with the intended outcome. And, while AI might be a great thought partner, it still has bugs in it that need to be corrected. In sum: it cannot do the work for you. Or, as one AI expert I learned from pointed out, AI isn’t actually intelligent at all. It is just running the algorithms predicting speech. So, a human would still need to verify the information it spits out.

The world is on the cusp of popularizing something really valuable, and I am glad to consider how we might use this technology in our community and beyond. How will we use AI at Keeping It Sacred? How will we ensure that AI is Keeping It Sacred? These are all questions on our doorstep, and ones that I invite you to join me in considering.

For a view of what I have learned, and to share your impressions, expertise, and/or questions, please join me for a discussion forum on AI and its possibilities: Keeping AI Sacred: A forum for YOU! It will be held via zoom on June 25 at 11am PT/2pm ET. Register HERE.This is how we’re Keeping AI Sacred.

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred…

Rabbi Heather Miller

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

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Thanks for your interest, and thanks for #keepingitsacred...