Cal Newport

It opens, you know, I talk about Genesis.

I talk about the identification of humans as speaking beings.

I'll just read one quote from the Rabbi Shai Held.

According to the medieval commentary, Rashi's speech is thus not only central to who we are as human beings, it is also key to our uniqueness.

Alone among God's creations, Jewish tradition affirms, human beings are capable of speech.

The essay goes on to say, there's something sacred about the production of ideas, whether it's vocalized or written.

It's a telepathy.

It's a mind state from one human being recreated in another human's mind.

It's the foundation on which

We democratized holiness, and from that, all the ideas we enjoy today about things like human rights and justice, that speech is at the core of the human experience.

And then the point of the article is asking the question, the ethical question, so is there something profane then about letting a machine produce speech as well?

Is this unique to humans, something we should cherish, or something like, oh, machines can do this as well, we'll just automate it around.

So I asked that question.

This generated a lot of feedback.

I'll read a few of these pieces of feedback here.

Yoshua said, great piece.

I'm an Orthodox Jew, and had I not known otherwise, your piece could have come straight out of a rabbi's Shabbat sermon.

Well, this does seem, I don't know, Jesse, like a good place for a blasphemous Cal Network joke.

Here's the one I came up with.

Cal Network doesn't give sermons about God.