Isaac Asimov’s renowned science fiction collection “I, Robot” narrates the tales of androids produced at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. These androids range from the non-speaking “Robbie” to the enigmatic “Stephen Byerley,” whose humanity is so convincing that people remain uncertain about his true nature. Each android, however, is constructed from the same basic building blocks: the binary code of ones and zeros. The difference in behavior between the most basic robot and the highly advanced one, nearly indistinguishable from humans, is merely the sequence of these digits. Ultimately, all programming languages, including today’s artificial intelligence, are translated into ones and zeros, akin to modern-day “Stephen Byerley.”
Although this technology is relatively contemporary, the fundamental concept it depends upon is ancient. The idea that rearranging fundamental components can produce remarkable results is evident in various fields, from technology and science to religion and art—a theme I delve into when examining the intersection of literature with science, technology, engineering, and math. Some intriguing examples of this theme are rooted in antiquity, emerging from Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition published in the 12th century C.E. Central to Kabbalah is the belief that Hebrew letters are the cosmic building blocks. According to mystical interpretations of Genesis’s creation story, God created the alphabet to bring the world into existence and assembled the earth and sky by reordering these letters. Howard Schwartz, a Jewish studies scholar, mentions in his book “Tree of Souls” that “God is depicted as an architect, with the Torah serving as a blueprint for world creation.”
The blending and arranging of letters bear an uncanny resemblance to the recombination of DNA strings. The “Sefer Yetzirah” or “Book of Creation,” deemed “the oldest and most enigmatic of Kabbalistic texts” by Torah scholar Aryeh Kaplan, attributes great power to Hebrew letters. In Rabbi Kaplan’s translation and commentary on verse 2.2, the letters are “engraved” by God “from nothingness,” and then “permuted” into varying combinations and “weighed.” Kaplan wrote that “Each letter symbolizes a distinct type of information,” and through their manipulation, God fashioned every aspect of creation. In Jewish legend, the sacred power of Hebrew letters can animate lifeless matter. Such is the case with an early humanoid robot or “android”: the golem, a clay figure. Many versions exist of this legend, but all emphasize that letters give life to the golem. The clay forms a lifelike entity when its creator speaks secret letter combinations.
The Hebrew word for truth, “אמת,” carved on the golem’s forehead, incorporates the alphabet’s first, central, and last letters, symbolizing truth’s all-encompassing reach. Depending on the tale, the golem either aids or disrupts the Jewish community. However, it signifies more than this: With mystical insight, humans emulate God’s act of creation. To render the golem lifeless, its creator must erase the first letter from its forehead: א, or aleph, representing God’s unity. This leaves us with מת, the Hebrew word for “dead,” resonating with the Jewish belief that truth is incomplete without God. Like the golem, robots, androids, and artificial intelligence function through recombinations of elemental units. Instead of Hebrew letters, these units are ones and zeros. The specific arrangement plays a crucial role in all these creations, which have inspired speculative narratives about the outcomes of familiar building blocks being rearranged. In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” a creature is assembled from assorted body parts. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, “Crakers” are bioengineered humans 2.0, with reshuffled genes. Science fiction writer Ted Chiang’s novella “Seventy-Two Letters,” drawing from golem myths, features dolls animated according to letter sequences on parchment in their backs. These patterns transcend fiction and extend beyond computer science. Permutative “coding” exists everywhere. Musical notes combine to create melodies; gene sequences form organisms.
In all living beings, the DNA instructions materialize through varying recombinations of four nucleobase pairs. The biological distinction between a complex human and a simple bacterium lies in this arrangement. Biologist Hugo de Vries noted, “The entire organic world arises from countless unique combinations and permutations of relatively few factors.” Not every combination is successful, be it in science or storytelling. Titus Lucretius Carus, a first-century Roman poet, warned in “On the Nature of Things,” a work on philosophy and physics, that “not all particles can be linked in all ways, or you’d see monsters everywhere, combinations half man, half beast…” Imaginative notions aside, the primary idea persists: Not all permutations result in viable outcomes. In modern biology, certain gene combinations of nucleobase pairs won’t produce a functional organism. Author Jorge Luis Borges addressed this in “The Library of Babel,” which explores a universe filled with books containing every possible permutation of 25 characters, mostly gibberish.
What differentiates what functions from what doesn’t is sequence. The behavioral distinction between Asimov’s simple robot “Robbie” and an AI sophisticated enough to seem sentient is rooted in the sequencing of ones and zeros forming its instructions—a concept similar to the significance of a single letter in Jewish folklore’s depiction of animation versus deanimation, and creation versus destruction. The novel permutations in AI have sparked apprehension and unpredictability. Yet, the biblical reassurance remains, suggesting: There’s nothing truly new under the sun.