Artificial Intelligence Is the Next Great Tool for the Study of Torah

In 1992, a group of researchers at Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan University published a CD-ROM containing a vast corpus of rabbinic literature, allowing scholars and students to search for words and phrases in ways far beyond what could be done with sheer memorization. A new generation of technology is now emerging that, using machine learning, can allow users to do far more with works of Jewish jurisprudence. In conversation with David Bashevkin, the computer scientist and legal scholar Moshe Koppel explains the implications of these new advances. He begins by talking about an existing program call Dicta Maivin, which can make obscure texts less so: