I’m willing to bet that the above title made you stop short: “what a strange question” you’re probably asking yourself – and an even weirder “answer.” But not only isn’t the question “strange,” it actually demands attention these days with AI algorithms running rampant e.g., ChatGPT, OpenAI, etc. And the holiday of Shavuot is as relevant a time as any to provide an answer.

We are living today in a world of increasing virtuality, roughly defined as something (actually, some NOT-thing) that either lacks physicality (e.g., a dream, computer memory), or offers only a partial (re)presentation of the “real” (e.g., a two-dimensional picture, light reaching us from distant galaxies that might no longer exist), or that incorporates potentiality to become something else.

It goes without saying that only humans deal in virtuality – animals do not create “external” virtuality, because they cannot think “abstractly” (e.g., rationally planning the future) – and they are also not aware of own “internal virtuality.” People, on the other hand, are involved everywhere in virtuality: literature (fictional characters), economics (paper money has no intrinsic value; electronic banking doesn’t involve any physical transfer of money); nations are (un)really........

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