AI and ChatGPT: Spiritual Resilience and Ethics | Khutbah by Dr. Omar Suleiman

AI and ChatGPT: Spiritual Resilience and Ethics

We begin by praising Allah and bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for Him. We bear witness that Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم is His final messenger. We ask Allah to send His peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment, and we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.

Opening: The Khutbah That Was Not Written by AI

Dear brothers and sisters, the following khutbah was not prepared using ChatGPT or any artificial intelligence. I'm going to start off with that for a reason. Because as ridiculous as that sounded for me to say it, there may come a time where that is actually the case — that people prepare their entire khutbahs, that people prepare their entire lectures. Allah knows best, people will try to replace imams and khateebs with some sort of artificial intelligence and the tools and the technology that have been made available to us today.

Now I'm going to start off by saying as well that this khutbah is relevant to each and every single person that is in this masjid today. Even if you have not yet engaged a single one of the new tools and technologies that have become available to us — and count me amongst them who have yet to even touch ChatGPT or many of these other things that have become available to us. We pray Allah allows us to use them for benefit and allows us to curtail the harm of them. Allahumma ameen.

But in these 15 minutes, I actually wanted to speak about the advent of these technologies and how as Muslims we can approach this from a spiritual framework — really not knowing much about what is to come in the years that are ahead, and what these technologies are actually going to look like for us. How do we as Muslims deal with this unraveling new reality? Not from a place of paranoia, but from a place of preparedness, and fit it into our entire framework and our entire existence of Ubudiyyah — of being in a state of worship to Allah, and in a state of constant benefit.

The Muslim Tradition of Beneficial Knowledge

I want to begin by noting that as Muslims we have always been able to see the benefit in things that are around us, especially when they become more and more inevitable. Our scholars of the past have been at the pioneering front of making technologies that would have otherwise been entirely harmful — or even producing technologies that would be to the benefit of people — whether it's in science or medicine or math or what it may be. But we've also been able to spiritually frame everything, no matter how material it seems.

We are a people, walhamdulillah, that have guidance from our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم on everything — from how we eat our food to how we use the restroom. And so certainly we have an ethical framework by which we approach the things that Allah is putting around us today.

And as we look at these technologies that are at the very least becoming relevant to you — because maybe your kids or maybe someone that you know is using them — and as a whole, the output of humanity is more and more dependent upon these technologies, I want us to first and foremost appreciate that there is a difference between tools that are for the benefit of people and tools that are for the destruction of people. And we have to understand that what Allah has given to us almost always has the potential to be a gift.

So when we talk about tools that arise amongst us, Allah has given us the ability to see the difference between tools that become more precise with medical technology to the benefit of people — if anyone has had a surgery recently or anyone works in the medical field as many Muslims do, you see the way that these things are evolving and that is something to say alhamdulillah for — and the difference between a more precise medical technology and a more precise military technology that makes killing people so much easier and so much more automatic, and usually unfortunately at the other side of that are poor Muslim populations disproportionately. And it's a tragedy if it's any innocent life or any innocent casualty.

We see the difference between those two things. A medical technology that's saving more lives and a military technology that's killing more people. And Muslim pioneers have always been at the forefront of taking the beneficial of something and removing the harmful. They also did not let their suspicion of what Allah has gifted them with lead to stagnation of human progress.

What do I mean by that? When they heard:

Allah has taught man by the pen. He's taught man that which man did not know. Muslims did not treat knowledge with suspicion. They used that knowledge and they saw that all of it is coming from Allah. And they thanked Allah for it with their tongues, and they thanked Allah by using and producing that which was beneficial to mankind.

The Danger of "More, More, More": A Spiritual Disease

And so when we enter into this maze now of artificial intelligence and all of these different tools and technologies, I wanted us to look at it first and foremost from the macro, and then from the micro as individuals. What does this mean for me as a Muslim? As things start to arise in my life that seemingly are just tools for convenience, how do I have the spiritual resilience to not fall for something that could actually be harmful, and start to contribute in a way, insha'Allah, that is beneficial?

You'll find journal after journal now, professor after professor, people that even worked within these sectors, writing about the danger of these tools and the need to produce ethics around them. That perhaps as human beings, we're moving too fast. We're making things and then, because of consumerism, we're releasing them without putting any type of guardrails on them. And then it just becomes a competition, a competition, a competition.

And subhanAllah, first and foremost, we recalibrate and we say: when tech vision has no God vision, then it becomes destructive — just like everything else. Because a godless vision for humanity cannot possibly put guardrails on anything that is produced for humanity. Because at the end of the day, anything that enables convenience is going to be deemed inherently good. Anything that makes life easier is going to be looked at as inherently good. And so we should do whatever we can do — and that's progress. How do you define progress from a secular perspective? We should do whatever it is we become capable of, and we define our progress as humanity because we're now able to do this and we weren't able to do this before. And so it becomes about maximizing profit, maximizing efficiency, maximizing happiness.

And eventually what ends up happening is you eliminate the workforce altogether. SubhanAllah, who would have thought that within just these few months of these technologies becoming available to us, a 14-year-old could do something on their phone and say, "make me the visuals for this and this and that," and it would replace an entire industry — or at least experts and the hard work of labor and creativity. So you're going to have workers' unions saying: what do we do, because now these technologies are making the workforce irrelevant as well? And it's all in the name of what? Maximizing, maximizing, maximizing. Make the most of it, make the most of it, make the most of it.

And I want to remind you that Allah speaks to spiritual diseases that underlie all sorts of evolving realities:

You've been destroyed by the pursuit of more. More, more, more, more destroys you as a human being at the individual level and destroys a society as well when it becomes the pursuit of abundance. "I want more of this, I want more of that." And "more" doesn't always just mean more money. It could mean: I want more done in as little time as possible. Productivity is good, but when the "more" becomes the definition, then that's a problem. "I want more done for me with as little effort on my part as possible." Of course we want to make use of tools for benefit, but what happens when I don't know how to do for myself anything anymore because I've been focused on the production of more, and more, and more, and more? And so eventually, in the name of productivity, you end up eliminating the purpose of your own existence altogether — if that's all that you exist for. More, more, more, more.

And subhanAllah, you think about the emptiness of people, and how true those words ring:

You've been destroyed by this pursuit of abundance. You're not happy — not as individuals or societies — despite your ability to seemingly do more, gain more, enjoy more. Because that's not the void that Allah has put in your human heart that can only be filled with Tawheed, that can only be filled by your belief and your service to God. There is nothing else that's going to fill that void, and you'll destroy yourself with that.

The Prophetic Warning About Abundance

And you think about the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم when he spoke about this ummah when he said:

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: I don't fear poverty for you. I don't fear a lack of resources for you. I don't fear your inability to take the next step when it comes to your production. What I fear for you is something far greater than that. I actually fear for you that the resources become plentiful for you, that the dunya opens its doors to you — and it destroys you the way that it destroyed those that came before you.

Because even if Fir'awn did not have the same technologies, Fir'awn had the same spiritual diseases that drive much of the production and tyrannical uses of technology today. And so you take a step back, and again you don't treat the whole thing as haram haram haram, but you look back at your heart, you look back at your spiritual disease, and what the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was speaking to us about.

Cultural Resistance to Dependency

SubhanAllah, as you read into the works of people that are familiar with the evolving of these technologies, one of the things that really struck me — subhanAllah — in some of these writings is that the only thing that is going to be able to curb ourselves, curb our usage of these things and stop us from falling victim to them, is a cultural resistance to dependency. I'm going to say that again: a cultural resistance to dependency.

Now when you think of that from a worldly framework, what people will speak about is this idea of human beings not becoming so dependent on technology that they no longer know how to do basic functions. How many of you can remember a phone number over the last 10 years? The GPS, even things that are very beneficial to us — we become so dependent that we lose basic functions in our brains. And so usually when cultural dependency is spoken about from a worldly perspective, it's: we don't want to have people that don't know how to put on their clothes, that don't know how to brush their teeth, that don't know how to do basic things anymore because they've become so dependent on technology. And so there has to be a cultural resistance to this, where people still know how to do things for themselves.

And so they'll stress the value of knowledge acquisition and skill acquisition purely from a worldly perspective. And subhanAllah, you look at what Allah has given to us and what the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم has given to us — with an Akhirah-oriented mindset in this regard. A cultural resistance to dependency.

Seeking Refuge from Laziness and Incapacity

When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم taught us to seek refuge in what?

Oh Allah, I seek refuge in You from laziness and incapacity. It's not a good thing for a Muslim to be lazy. It's one of the worst things that you could have — otherwise you wouldn't seek refuge in Allah from it — no matter how convenient things are to you.

Allah Rewards the Effort, Not Just the Output

When Allah tells us in the Quran:

We will write everything that they have produced as well as their āthār. And I'm purposely not translating āthār because it has two meanings in this ayah. One of them the scholars mention is their legacy — their legacy, the footprints, the effect. There are people that do things and even if they're not responsible for the final product, they're there in the process, and Allah rewards them for that. So Allah rewards people in the process of doing good, people that make things happen behind the scenes in their present or in their future.

But some of the scholars also say that another meaning is not سُنَّةً حَسَنَةً — not a good legacy — but it's literally their footsteps. As Hasan al-Basri رحمه الله said:

Their footsteps towards good. Everything that they put forth an effort towards, Allah will reward the effort. And so there is a connection between the actual effort itself and the reward — not just the final product. What you do, and getting away from that dependency upon things that are outside of your own production.

So سَنَكْتُبُ مَا قَدَّمُوا وَآثَارَهُمْ — We will write down their footsteps, خُطَاهُمْ. When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said to the people that would walk to the masjid:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 663)

Stay in your homes and walk to the masjid — Allah will write down every single footstep for you. Here to Salatul Jumu'ah, wherever you parked and however you walked to the masjid:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 496; Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 1087)

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: with every footstep that you take towards Jumu'ah, Allah writes down for you a year of fasting and a year of Qiyam. May Allah accept it from each one of us. Allahumma ameen. Every footstep that you take — incentivizing the footstep itself. That you have to work, you have to put in those extra things so that you can stay connected to that ajr.

When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم talks about a person who reads the Quran and struggles, and Allah giving them ajrān — two rewards as they struggle — with every single letter, Allah writes down hasanāt for every single letter that you pronounce. You can't capture that otherwise.

And your efforts have been rewarded by Allah. You can't capture that otherwise. When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم says:

(Referenced in Islamic jurisprudence; attributed to the principles established in Prophetic traditions)

And this has a context to it — that reward is in accordance with how much effort you put in, the hardship, the struggle. You can't capture that with just the output. You're getting away from things being done for you and wanting to do more for the sake of Allah and actually looking forward to every single moment of effort that you put forth for the sake of Allah.

And when we talk about the transition of scholarship and ilm, I don't care how intelligent these things become — we will always have the sanad, we will always have the chain amongst us where we narrate from this person, from that person, from that person. Where people memorize the Quran because the Quran is meant to be stored in our hearts and our minds. Where knowledge acquisition is through that proper transfer.

And so as Muslims, we look at how Allah rewards us for the effort itself. And so when people talk about resisting a culture of dependence — so you have to get into Boy Scouts and go out and know how to do things for yourself, and they talk about it purely from a worldly framework — we look at it from the Akhirah incentive as well, from the Hereafter incentive as well. That we love to do for the sake of Allah, and we understand that the process itself is rewardable, and that Allah will bless us for every moment that we struggle in His path — not incurring unnecessary hardship, but still doing the deeds that are necessary for our salvation, and finding joy in everything that we do for the sake of Allah.

So the scholars mention here this ibadah of swimming, this ibadah of horseback riding, this ibadah of archery, this ibadah — this act of worship — of taking care of yourself, of knowing how to do, and knowing how to acquire, all so that you can use those things for the benefit of mankind and for the sake of Allah.

So clearly when we talk about this from an ethical perspective, dear brothers and sisters: do not substitute ajr for convenience always. Sometimes you need to do these things so that you can find the reward from Allah. And that's going to give us the spiritual resilience — and who knows, when you read about the Day of Judgment and the signs of the Day of Judgment, and you read about the way that things are reduced back to a very rudimentary way of living, that the technologies that people have developed fail them, and ultimately people go back to their fundamentals — it may be that the spiritual resilience that Allah has put inside of us as Muslims in our ummah, that we still insist on doing the manual things for the sake of Allah, actually gives us a trajectory of success in the future, while still learning the beneficial technologies and finding ways to put guardrails on them and develop, insha'Allah, our future with ilm.

Because we are an ummah of literacy and ilm at the same time. We're an ummah that promotes literacy, that promotes knowledge, but also finds benefit in each and every single person, and in each and every single deed that is done for the sake of Allah.

Keeping Perspective: Signs of the Hour and the Dajjal

And I'm going to end with two things here, insha'Allah, as well. When we're talking about AI, and we're talking about robots, and you're seeing these videos of things that are dancing around in these factories that seem so much superior to human beings — let me actually put this out there: the world is not going to end by robots. As Muslims, we believe in alamāt al-sā'ah as the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم gave it to us — the stages of the unfolding of the Day of Judgment — and so the Day of Judgment will come as Allah and the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم has said. All of these signs that happen will still come to pass. But a lot can happen from now until then.

And so we have to have that constant ethical framework to where we're approaching these things and saying: How do I make the most of this situation? And how do I insist on still being a human being in this world as it is today? So: insisting upon righteousness.

And I don't believe for a moment that al-Dajjal is a robot, but I do believe that al-Masih al-Dajjal will use all forms of deception that are available to him — and Allah knows what tactics of deception are going to be available to him at that time. I don't believe that Ya'juj and Ma'juj are being produced in Silicon Valley. I believe in it as Allah and the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم spoke about it. That's how we are as Muslims. So I understand the doom and gloom as well — but Allah has given us something to ground ourselves, bi'idhnillahi ta'ala.

Verification: An Eternal Quranic Command

And the last thing I'll say here is: your Lord is precise. Your Lord is precise. SubhanAllah, I was reflecting on how these permanent values exist in the Quran, even with worlds that are so unfamiliar to the companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم — worlds that are so unfamiliar.

You know, one of the greatest fears that they're talking about with this technology is fake news. You can impose voices on people. You could literally take a person and make them say something that they're not saying at all. And so bad faith actors are going to use these technologies to promote more chaos, more turmoil. And even the psychological effect — even if you know that what you're looking at is not real — the psychological effect of seeing a trusted person saying something so horrible, of seeing images and videos put together, it erodes you psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

And you think about what that is, even today — subhanAllah — even today, the deception that exists: of the fake news industry, outside of the Muslim community and inside the Muslim community, putting images out of context, words out of context, pasting videos and words so that you can create things. What does Allah say?

Verify your information. Go to the source. Always go to the source. Because otherwise you might hurt someone unknowingly, and then you will end up regretting what you have done. Going back to the source. So not trusting the technologies or the information as it arises — going to the source of that information and verifying it.

Closing Du'a

May Allah protect us from hurting ourselves or from hurting others. May Allah allow us to make the most of what is around us, and may Allah reward us for our efforts and make our outputs beneficial to us in this dunya and the next. Allahumma ameen.

أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم ولسائر المسلمين فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرحيم.

الحمد لله والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله وعلى آله وصحبه ومن والاه.

وصلى الله وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين. ونقيم الصلاة.