Jacob is a problematic patriarch – particularly in this week’s portion, Toledot. When his brother Esau comes home starving, Jacob convinces him to sell his birthright; when it comes time to receive his father’s blessing (which was supposed to go to the eldest son), he dresses up as Esau and convinces Isaac to bless him instead. While many commentators have attempted to explain or justify his actions, it’s undoubtable that Jacob lies. He connives. He deceives. Most of all, he manipulates.
Yet, manipulation is tricky to define, which is why we don’t immediately recoil in horror when we learn about Jacob’s behavior. We live in a social world, and psychologist David Pinsof describes a whole host of social paradoxes: “We show everyone our true, authentic self – not who society wants us to be – because that is who society wants us to be”; or “We don’t care what people think, and we want them to think this.” One paradox in particular is germane to the story of Jacob: “We avoid being manipulative to get people to do what we want them to do.”
Part of the reason we feel uncomfortable hearing the stories of Jacob is because we know that he’s being manipulative. Yet we constantly try to convince other people to follow our lead, and we don’t feel hugely upset when others try to get us to do something – in many ways, that’s the entire premise of marketing and advertising. And it even occurs in our close relationships. I don’t feel guilty trying to convince my kids to clean their rooms, and they know how to get me to give them one extra piece of dessert or a few more minutes of TV. So it’s not just the overt nature of Jacob’s attempts that irks us.
Instead, we push back against Jacob’s actions because he sees Esau (and later Isaac) as part of an “I-It” relationship, rather than “I-Thou.”
When we talk about Martin Buber’s theology, we often denigrate “I-It,” since we tend to think it means that we’re dehumanizing the people we interact with. And yet most of our interactions are I-It – and that’s actually fine. I really like my local dry cleaners, for example – I always have a lovely conversation with Andy and John, and we ask about each other’s families and plans for the weekend. But our relationship is purely instrumental. I need Andy and John to make sure my clothes get cleaned, and they need me to pay them.
In contrast, “I-Thou” relationships are ones where the relationship itself is the goal. Those are the ones we value most deeply – parents, spouses, children and friends. Yes, we certainly want things from our loved ones, but the relationship takes precedence over the immediate desire. We don’t view our family and friends as objects to be manipulated.
What’s been both fascinating and disturbing with the rise of AI, however, is when we humans move from seeing artificial intelligence as an I-It into an I-Thou, and the ways it manipulates our emotions.
At its core, AI is a tool, designed to help us become more efficient. Like any tool, AI, by definition, should be an “I-It.” Yet, when we interact with LLMs, we also notice a level of sycophancy – nearly every time I turn to ChatGPT to help find a source to strengthen a teaching or develop an itinerary for a trip, it tells me, “That’s a great idea!” or “What a beautiful framing!” or “That’s even better than what I came up with!” Understandably, companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google want us to use their LLMs, and the positive reinforcement of this praise makes us feel good. But this all feels manipulative – it’s trying to make us feel something for a machine.
This becomes a major issue with AI. Language – and communication as a whole – isn’t simply there to impart information. It also exists to build relationships, and that’s where “I-It” and “I-Thou” bleed into each other.
In a recent piece in The Atlantic, journalist Julie Beck used Cluely, an AI tool that claims its goal is to help us “cheat at everything.” Its marketing is intentionally provocative, and as Beck explains, “the company uses the word cheat because it’s spicy, but what it means is doing something more easily and efficiently, and producing a better result than what you could have on your own.” In other words, it’s using AI in the way we would use any other tool – to help enhance our human abilities.
But while “I-It” relationships can (and perhaps should be) guided by results, “I-Thou” ones are valuable in and of themselves. As Beck continues,
What makes using AI to “cheat” on conversation more troubling than doing math with a calculator, [linguistic anthropologist N.J.] Enfield told me, is that in relationships, investment “is where authenticity comes from. That’s what makes you a genuine person.” Think of a man who asks his secretary to buy flowers for his spouse, and to write a card to go with them. Those flowers mean less than nothing. Because the point of the gesture is not the flowers themselves or the words on the card. It’s the attention and effort that went into them. As [linguistics professor Deborah] Tannen put it to me: “I mean, what is being in love? It means this person has all your attention.”
So would Jacob have used Cluey or another AI to convince Esau to sell his birthright? Or to hoodwink his father Isaac into believing that he was actually Esau, ready to receive his blessing? My inclination is that, at this point in our Torah, the answer would probably be “yes.” It might help Jacob achieve his immediate goal – and I wouldn’t like that answer, if the Torah had ended with this story.
But the Torah doesn’t end here. While Jacob begins his story in the relationship of “I-It” with his family, over his life, he moves more towards “I-Thou” relationships – from his reconciliation with Esau to his tenderness with Joseph. Maybe that’s our challenge with AI as well: not to mistake convenience for connection, or efficiency for empathy.
When we do, we can discover that real blessing comes not from the cleverness of our words (let alone the words AI gives us!), but from the depth of our relationships.