A Buddhist Contribution to Artificial Intelligence?

2021

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2022

Intelligence is a central feature of human beings’ primary and interpersonal experience. Understanding how intelligence originated and scaled during evolution is a key challenge for modern biology. Some of the most important approaches to understanding intelligence are the ongoing efforts to build new intelligences in computer science (AI) and bioengineering. However, progress has been stymied by a lack of multidisciplinary consensus on what is central about intelligence regardless of the details of its material composition or origin (evolved vs. engineered). We show that Buddhist concepts offer a unique perspective and facilitate a consilience of biology, cognitive science, and computer science toward understanding intelligence in truly diverse embodiments. In coming decades, chimeric and bioengineering technologies will produce a wide variety of novel beings that look nothing like familiar natural life forms; how shall we gauge their moral responsibility and our own moral obligati...

Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal, 2022

In this article, I will explore the debate on the ethical challenges posed by AI. I will do so by engaging in conversation with Dr. Peter Hershock who is expert in Modern Buddhism and Ethics. Dr. Hershock has recently published a landmark study on the matter called Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future. He argues that the main challenge that AI poses, is not technological, but ethical. And that we need to establish an ethics that will foster a shared flourishing for all on this planet if we want to resolve the predicament of value conflicts embedded in the technologically driven advancement of AI. This could be done through development of what Dr. Hershock calls virtuosic relational dynamics, a relational way of organizing our society that goes beyond individualism. To reach there, the perspectives offered by Buddhist philosophy will be discussed and explained. In conclusion, we will propose that Buddhist philosophy can offer insights and practices that may enrich our pursuit of sustainable AI ethics.

Buddhist Moral Conscience and Artificial Intelligence Consequences, 2024

The foundation teaching of Buddhism, expressed in the Four Noble Truths, is that the stress and unhappiness of life (duhkkha) is caused by our desires and ego-clinging. The notion of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is understood broadly as any kind of artificial computational system that shows intelligent behavior, i.e., complex behavior that is conducive to reaching goals. This intersection seeks to understand how Buddhist concepts can inform scientific theories and technological advancements in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Digital advancements and frequent application of such kind of technological inventions are become most effective tools of Artificial Intelligence. Uprooting the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion expressing them in a more positive form with compassion and wisdom can lead to a more peaceful and harmonious society. This will help to develop in emerging field at the intersection of multidisciplinary understandings in application

Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2022

In this article, I will explore the debate on the ethical challenges posed by AI. I will do so by engaging in conversation with Dr. Peter Hershock who is expert in Modern Buddhism and Ethics. Dr. Hershock has recently published a landmark study on the matter called Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future. He argues that the main challenge that AI poses, is not technological, but ethical. And that we need to establish an ethics that will foster a shared flourishing for all on this planet if we want to resolve the predicament of value conflicts embedded in the technologically driven advancement of AI. This could be done through development of what Dr. Hershock calls virtuosic relational dynamics, a relational way of organizing our society that goes beyond individualism. To reach there, the perspectives offered by Buddhist philosophy will be discussed and explained. In conclusion, we will propose that Buddhist philosophy can offer insights and practices that may enrich our pursuit of sustainable AI ethics.

Accountability in Research, 2013

Recently, Fenton (2009) has argued that Buddhist ethics can accommodate the use of attention-enhancing drugs, and Walker (2006, 2009) has argued that future neurotechnologies may be used to enhance happiness and virtue. This paper uses a Western Buddhist perspective, drawing on many Buddhist traditions, to explore how emerging neurotechnologies may be used to suppress vices and enhance happiness and virtue. A Buddhist approach to the authenticity of technologically-mediated spiritual progress is discussed. The potential utility and dangers of mood manipulation for a Buddhist understanding of liberation are outlined. Then the ten paramitas of Theravadan Buddhism are explored to frame an exploration of the potential genes, neurochemicals and brain structures that could be targeted as part of a program of neurotechnological moral enhancement.

2020

Given our increasing interaction with artificial intelligence and immersion in virtual reality, which epistemic and moral attitudes towards virtual beings might we think proper, relevant, and fulfilling? That is the basic question that this article wishes to raise. For the main part, it presents a descriptive analysis of our current situation, which is meant to expose features of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) that seem both salient and easily aligned with central Buddhist concerns. Developed without any requirement for, or expectation of, the existence 1 Kathmandu University Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute. Email: [email protected]. Many thanks are due to my esteemed colleagues at the Center for the Study of Apparent Selves (www.csas.ai) with whom I have the good fortune of exploring the issues that this paper takes preliminary notice of. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Than...

Neural Network World

Journal of Global Buddhism, 2020

When Buddhism fails to live up to the projected promise of its doctrine or past forms, it is often the human nature of its adherents (‘Bad Buddhists’), rather than the content of its teachings (‘Bad Buddhism’), that is blamed. But what if such human failings - greed, corruption, violence, even mortality - could be transcended? In the quest for a ‘good Buddhism,’ high-tech designs that utilise robotics, artificial intelligence, algorithmic agency, and other advancements are increasingly pursued as solutions by innovators inside and outside Buddhist communities. In this paper, we interrogate two recent cases of what we call ‘Buddhist techno-salvationism’. Firstly, Pepper, the semi-humanoid robot who performs funeral sutras to a rapidly secularising and aging population of parishioners in Japan. Secondly, the Lotos Network, a US start-up proposing to use blockchain technology to combat financial corruption within global sanghas. We argue that such robotic and digital experiments are the logical outcome of techno-salvationist discourses that identify human failings as the principal barrier to perfect Buddhist praxis. If not always practical solutions, these interventions are powerful nonetheless as contested projections of Buddhist futures.

Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2020

Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the nascent scientific literature on 'plant learning' pose serious challenges to Buddhist philosophy of mind and to Buddhist practical ethics. These challenges are of two general types. First, the empirical results threaten to extend the reach of mind more broadly than premodern South Asian and Tibetan Buddhists were willing to allow, calling into question the rational defensibility of a range of Buddhist moral commitments. But the discovery of learning in non-animals also threatens to destabilize the crucial Buddhist distinction between 'sentient beings' and the 'receptacle world', and raises the possibility of a separation between intelligence and consciousness. The emergence of such a separation could require a basic rethinking of the traditional framework of the five aggregates. These developments should also sharpen our attention to AI safety by making the prospect of existential AI risk even more threatening than it would otherwise have been.