The challenges of combating antisemitism and the solutions that the age of AI provides - Opinion

• Published date: 07 April 2024
• Author: DAVID BARAK-GORODETSKY
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

In December, I asked ChatGPT - the current leading artificial intelligence (AI system) - to tell me a Christian joke, a Muslim joke, and a Jewish joke. The first joke expropriates Jonah exclusively to Christian culture, but it is fairly amusing. The second isn't really a joke, and it was preceded by a comment emphasizing the importance of respecting all religions when using humor. The third joke is antisemitic

In recent months, since the Hamas attack and the start of the war, there has been an explosion in the level of antisemitism around the world. According to Fighting Online Antisemitism, during the first month of the war, the number of antisemitic posts was three times higher than in the same period in 2022.

The Internet and social media have become the main arena in which antisemitism appears, both in manifestations that relate to Israel and in those that do not.

At the same time, AI has been transformed from a science fiction idea to a tangible reality that is shaping - and in the future will even more strongly shape - global public discourse and our knowledge about reality at large. AI is a learning system that analyzes a mass quantity of material written by humans - historically and in the present - in order to consolidate its own knowledge.

Online antisemitism and the solutions in the age of AI

As it does so, it exposes the biases present in this material, one of which is antisemitism. The result is a combination of "classical" antisemitism, characterized by negative stereotypes of Jews, and the new antisemitism of recent decades and years, which sees Israel as the ultimate embodiment of Western colonialism - a lethal cocktail that presents a clear threat to Jewish and Israeli existence.

...