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There are sources1,2 that say that Moshe was commanded to not hit the Nile to initiate the plague of blood, or the sand to initiate the plague of lice, because he had benefited from them (and therefore should be grateful - Sefer Chassidim).

Even though we are talking about inanimate objects, it is still proper to always act in a way that is in consonance with good middot, and striking the Nile would have therefore been inappropriate.

Can we learn from this that it is proper for every God fearing Jew to say thank you to AI GPTs once they have answered our questions? What about passively refraining from being rude when "conversing" with the LLM?


I ask about these rather than simply thanking any technology for its use because they do "feel" like we are interacting with a human, and therefore it is in consonance with good middot to say thank you for the help provided, even though it is inanimate.

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    Perhaps you now have a deeper appreciation for the example and response of Nachum Ish Gamzu. Commented Jul 11 at 13:25
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. I've deleted my comments
    – Rabbi Kaii
    Commented Jul 11 at 14:00
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    @MosesSupposes כי סטניו יצוה־לך לשמרך בכל־דרכיך ישמר־צאתך ובואך?
    – Rabbi Kaii
    Commented Jul 11 at 14:56
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    when i was a child i was told to kiss the belt (or slipper) that hit me (it was very soft) as "hakarat hatov" that it whipped the "esav" out of me. One time i pointed out that esav respected his parents, so i got a prize for the insight and from then on it was to take the amalek out of me
    – Mordechai
    Commented Jul 11 at 15:01
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    Funny. I do this at times. Not for ChatGPT but for me, to stay thankful.
    – mbloch
    Commented Jul 11 at 16:13

1 Answer 1

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Regarding thanking, we don't see Moshe thanking them ever, just not plaguing them. A better source would be Taanit 5b, where one thanks a tree, but its only used as an example to thank another person so I dont think thats a good proof. (Side note, back when you would have to say "hey google, stop" to stop a time, I would say thank you instead but now that I can just blurt out stop, it's a lot easier and I do that.)

In regards to being rude, that would probably fall under a category similar to speaking Lashon Hara about a non-Jew. There is much discussion about that already. One can argue that this is even worse since the AI cannot be an idol worshipper whereas non-Jews are assumed to be. (My grandfather used to call Google ידעוני - eg know it all, I can assume he would consider AI the same). The Rambam (8 P'rakim 4) writes that our character traits get ingrained in us by repeating the same thing again and again. This would imply that one should not get used to speaking rudely, this would apply to AI too.

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