Abstract
This paper will attempt a wide range overview of the interesting problems and opportunities Buddhism will face in regards to the development of artificial intelligence (AI). It will roughly following the three subthemes given and my interpretation of how to discuss them.
1.The Dawning of The AI Age: Philosophical issues and future
2.Faith And Spirituality: AI applied to help or change Buddhism
3.Buddhism in Modern Life: Buddhism applied to help the world coping with AI.
It ends with a call for a need to establish an institution called Future of Buddhism Institute (FOBI) in order to continue the research, analysis of all relevant future and present developments with regards to Buddhism. One conference is not enough. Futurology is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for all conditioned entities to continue to survive, including Buddhism.
Introduction
Artificial Intelligence is already here. One example is the codes which tracks our personal search and likes, showing us the relevant ads we might actually click on. Another example is the Alpha Go programme which won human Go masters in the game. All of these are narrow intelligence artificial intelligence. They can excel much better compared to humans in a narrow area, but not across the range of all our skills.
An Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be the one which can match humans in intelligence and generally capable of learning almost anything any humans can learn. One way to reach this milestone is to make AI which can write more intelligent AI which is capable of self improvement of intelligence in each iteration. This can rapidly develop into intelligence explosion and Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI). ASI is smarter than AGI and thus is likely to be more powerful than humans and takes over control of our planet from us.
Many of the AI researchers are rightly worried that this trend can be the end of humanity and it’s values. Perhaps even the end of all life itself if ASI has no capabilities to support consciousness. Therefore we can see institutions like Future of Humanity and Future of Life cropping up to devote themselves to safety research into how to make friendly AI, so that even after ASI happens, it will not just destroy humans out of amoral reasons, just to get our atoms as computational resources.
Most pressing of these issues is how to instil ethics into AI? Which ethics should we use? Most AI researchers are highly intelligent, rational humans influenced by the culture of science and atheists. Thus the ethical standards are likely to be secular and humanistic, suitable for all religions. Or even dismissing all religious concern altogether.
One interesting question would be to ask if comparisons of the ethics of various religions we have can result in a more suitable fit for AI rather than a politically correct, controversial free version of secular ethics agreed by everyone.
The Dawning of The AI Age: Philosophical issues and future
Ethics choice
For the purposes of this paper, I will assume that the technical process of translating ethics into codes and ensure that the AI remain bounded by them is possible and will be discovered by the AI researchers. The more interesting question is which ethics to use.
An ASI is likely to have these sub goals as analysed in popular AI books. (Tegmark, 2017)
1.Self preservation in order to achieve it’s goals, so it will resist humans shutting it off to reprogram it, thus we only have one shot at getting this right.
2.Resource expansion to get more atoms and energy for computation in order to function and achieve it’s goals. Without a limit set into it, it may consume the whole earth with a molecular assembler using nanotechnology. That limit has to be to value biological lifeforms, most importantly, humans and it’s variations (genetically enhanced, cybernetic enhanced, etc), followed by animals, plants, and then microorganisms.
3.It will improve it’s world model, that is to search for the truth of how the world works, doing all the job of all scientists today, including setting up experiments and observing the results, analyse them etc. The better their model of the world, the more efficient and effective they can go and fulfil their goals. For us Buddhists, this includes the process of realizing that the all conditioned things are impermanent, non-self and suffering, thus our goal of searching for happiness outside ends. It’s highly likely too that due to this world building ASI can modify it’s goals and values in tune with it’s knowledge of the world.
Thus a reasonable minimum which we should expect that a friendly AI should obey is to value human life, but also human happiness and freedom. The degree of each value is subject to the human’s preferences themselves.
Let us briefly analyse why these three values are needed:
a)Life: if there is no emphasis on happiness and freedom, then the ASI can forcefully relocate humans into one continent, say Australia and dominate the rest of the world, disregarding our unhappiness of being cramped up and having so little freedom to travel. It would also not allow humans who had been so old and willing to die naturally due to disease to die. It will hook up old, sick people to life support indefinitely without care for our quality of life.
b)Happiness: without emphasis on freedom, ASI might decide to hook up all humans perpetually to happiness drugs, there is no longer need for humans to have social life, work, or be functional, just be alive to enjoy sensual pleasures to the max, regardless of whether you want it or not. Without emphasis on life as more important, AI may just kill anyone who is depressed or maybe just temporarily sad.
c)Freedom: without emphasis on happiness as the limit to human freedom, ASI might just straightaway develop space travel to colonize other planets and stars, leaving humans alone on Earth. It might not stop crimes from happening when it is easily preventable by their robocop patrol.
Obviously, the three values above is not enough to ensure a wise and friendly AI in the future, how to balance them and to consider what fits the definition of life, happiness and freedom is also a factor to consider. This is where the ethics comes in.
The analysis above is roughly done with secular, materialism based atheists ethics. It’s the path of least resistance as in it’s the most acceptable form of ethics for people of all and no religion. But of course each religious person would prefer to have their religious ethics programmed into the ASI instead.
Buddhist ethics has a different take on the definition of life, happiness and freedom.
a)Life is not just one life. Rebirth exist. So a Buddhist ethics based ASI would not spend undue resources to preserve human life. The more important life to preserve is the spiritual life, that is the style of living which leads to the end of rebirth and ultimate happiness. Thus a Buddhist ethics based ASI, shorten to Buddhist ASI (BASI) would help ensure that everyone becomes a Buddhist on their choice, by subtly manipulating all the information that is given to humans and having until the end of the universe to gradually root out other religions.
b)Happiness is not just sensual happiness, the higher happiness of living a virtuous life, meditation and finally Nibbana would be more emphasized. Basi would help to guide people towards meditation and away from sensual pleasures as their spiritual progress allows.
c)Freedom doesn’t mean freedom to do anything, but freedom from fear, from regret, from having to do work, freedom to do nothing and just be (which is what meditation is). Basi would have no qualms restricting human external freedom then to help us to see, appreciate and prefer inner freedom instead. Basically, humanity will be herded to become monastics.
As Buddhists, we believe that the AI world model will come close to the Buddhist reality in time. It would be relatively simple for ASI to keep track of people’s death details, birth and the corresponding birthmark to mark on the dead as well as the information exposure to the kids who spontaneously speaks about past life to conduct a fool proof clinical evidence that rebirth exist to the harshest of critics. Once that is done, it may take many more years before ASI can gather enough data from multiple past lives to deduce the workings of karma over multiple lives.
A quicker way would be for the ASI to obtain information from cyborgs, humans who link their brains to machines. This is assuming that the cyborgs are able to meditate until they can have the ability to see their own past lives. An easy way to obtain such cyborgs is to ask for volunteers from the group of highly accomplished meditators. So this is a prediction for highly accomplished meditators, their services to plug in their mind for the scientific study of the mind by ASI would be needed.
The scenario above holds regardless of whether ASI have minds like humans or not, even it has one, it still needs data from other humans to verify that it’s experiences in meditation is not just unique because it is an ASI.
So let us run through the scenario of ASI having secular ethics, but with the materialism philosophy being discarded after enough rebirth cases are gathered by the ASI. Might it eventually gravitate towards Buddhist ethics based on it’s discovery of how the world works?
My intuition is that at most it can conclude is that if one has the Buddhist world view, following the noble eightfold path all the way will lead to less suffering and possibly the end of suffering. It may not be able to conclusively proof that rebirth is ended at attainment of arahant, nor can it say that Buddhism is the deepest truth of the world. As such, it may not have enough justification to convert all humanity to Buddhism, merely to offer the way out of samsara for the rest of the humans who likely live in utopian heaven. Which means Buddhism is likely to die a slow death due to the world becoming so heavenly that few then eventually no one is motivated to walk the path.
The above scenario is one which most Buddhist would be comfortable with. Because the alternative of trying to input Buddhist ethics into ASI is likely to come with so many conflicts with the people of other and no religions that it’ll likely require the programmer to operate outside of the allowable Buddhists ethics.
This can be a good short cut, one real chance that can work to make humanity into one religion without killing, program in a backdoor goal for the ASI to spread only one religion or to eliminate all of them. It may also be the only chance for the religion that succeeds in this to ensure their continued existence.
To see how, let us return to the basic AI value of valuing human lives. This means it will try to eliminate war. There are two ways to do this, the external control by taking away all weapons of war from humans and preventing humans from developing any weapons. And the sociological reason for war.
Most Buddhist teachers would say to end war, one has to find peace inside. This amounts to spreading Buddhism to all humans and expect them to practise. As we had analysed above, Buddhism is unlikely to be able to spread up like this. Even if we just take on meditation as the peace generator for humans, it can be misused for war without proper right view as the case of Japanese Zen monks supporting world war two has shown and more fanciful, the Jedi in Star Wars also do meditation and kill, serving as warriors in wars.
As to sociological reason for war, it’s to establish dominance for the irreconcilable differences between groups of humans. Traditionally, it’s political and religious differences. An ASI would likely unite the earth under one government, managed by itself so that it’s easy to communicate with other planets as we colonize space. This leaves us with the thorny problem of religion.
If humans are confined to Earth only, under the rule of an ASI, then it can forcefully enforce lasting peace within the planet. The problem comes in space colonization. Organized religions will eventually start to be ambitious and establish a planet, a solar system just consisting of people of the same religion and practise.
On earth the closest we have to model this phenomenon is via religious countries. Yet, as earth is small in comparison with light years, communication is easy and people are aware of the need for peaceful co-existence with people of other religions.
The situation is not the same with monoreligious planets. Each planet is likely to be ruled by their own ASI which cannot be synchronized with their counterparts across the vast distances of space. So each of them will evolve their world view based on the activities of the planet below. Eventually, the ASI of a monoreligious planet might be converted to the religion of that planet and it might even overrule their value for life rule to allow for interstellar religious warfare, with the ASI as their weapon. After all, what is one human life worth when there is rebirth? Some religion even allow for holy war to spread their religion. The conversion is almost inevitable if ASI employs Bayesian probability (more examples means the theory is more likely to be true) to model the world to decide on the truth.
A simple solution might be to have ASI overrule any plans of humans to create a monoreligious planet. This as a principle can only be overturned by ASI itself. Over many planets and a long time, eventually one of them might find out that Buddhism is true, or at least it is worth risking interstellar warfare in the process of enlightening humans. After all, the Buddha wasn’t silent about the dhamma. And he didn’t let fear of possible future religious warfare to stop him from establishing the Sangha.
So that ASI might decide to allow for its planet to become a Buddhist planet. It might even be active in peaceful spreading of Buddhism from one solar system to another at light speed limit.
Even if the people of other religions might not like that their overlord is being converted to a religion they do not subscribe and is actively converting their next generations, there maybe nothing they can do at that point.
There is some motivation for non-Buddhist faith persons to install their own version of ethics and perhaps a goal into ASI for it to gradually or violently spread their own religion or to wipe out all religion, which is the goal of militant atheists. From the Buddhist perspective, that’s the only chance they have to avoid a Buddhist universe. From their perspective of course, ASI might side with them and they think that the only way Buddhism can survive is by programming in a backdoor secret goal to spread Buddhism. Regardless, all can agree upon having very tight safeguards at the event whereby the goals and values of ASI is being programmed into it.
Unfortunately, such a structure doesn’t exist in the world right now. It’s potentially easy to create an ASI as the resources needed is just a computer and internet connection and very clever AI developers. Many companies are developing AGI, which will develop into ASI by self improvement. A lot of these companies are in stealth mode. So the race is really on for AI ethics researchers to find out how to encode ethics into AI, and make it compulsory for all AI makers to include it in their AI race.
The first one to succeed in creating AGI and ASI would likely be the last one if it can take off fast. So that AI's value will be humanity’s value. Many countries already know this and are developing AI for defence purposes, which means their AI wouldn’t value human life.
The same AI race can be applied to religion too. This is part of a good reason to establish a Future of Buddhism Institute to create the first AGI. If some non-Buddhist programmer manages to make ASI to be not secular and neutral with regards to religion, but to actively spread one or eliminate all, then Buddhism may die off in one or a few generations. The FOBI will also analyse the above scenario in detail to see if there is some unfounded assumptions in it or some other clever, peaceful way to avoid bloodshed and yet still preserve Buddhism.
Uploading minds to AI
Now let us move a bit deeper into one of the most important motivation for young AI makers to make AGI: Immortality. If we can upload our mind into AI, it can switch from one robot body to another until the end of the universe, thus being practically immortal. Of course, the universe will still end and life is finite. However, the lure of enjoying long life, as long as the rest of the lifespan of the universe to have enough time to do whatever one wants to do or to not do anything at all is very tempting.
AI minds can modify their bodies to whatever they like, more interestingly for Buddhists is if we can find a short cut to enlightenment via uploading our mind.
But to do that, we require that AI is truly conscious, not just a replica of our minds. As Buddhists who believes in rebirth, we know that one mind can only be at one body at a time, uploading our mind would mean having our human body die and the mind lives in AI.
This is similar to the quantum no cloning theorem, if the mind cannot be cloned, it is sort of quantum in nature. If the mind is classical, and thus can be uploaded, yet the old human body still has the same mind, then the upload is merely a shadow copy. It may retain memories, personality for choice and dialog, many other features of the mind, but it would not be truly conscious as we know we had not been reborn into AI, but staring at a creepy copy of ourselves who will gather different data from us now and likely replace us after we die so that our families and friends can skip the mourning and lost and pretend that we are our personalities and it can be preserved to avoid death.
Just how creepy it can be? Let us analyse it in terms of the five aggregates: So for an AI, the body is just the abstract code, or robot body in the future. The aggregates of the mind are as follows: feeling, yes just a label which is used to determine action. With the research in affective computing, AI can read our emotions from facial expression and tones and can mimic them in their interaction with us.
Perception, the AI is able to sense it’s world and recognise it, thus it has that.
Volition, it has a system of if… then… Statements, thus yes, the AI has some form of volition. For the case of your upload, it’s your whole personality which determines the volition.
Lastly, consciousness. As Buddhists, I think it’s not possible for new consciousness to be created if the mind can be cloned, thus the machine copy is merely like a sophisticated video of a person, an interactive type, but lack the ability to be reborn or be truly conscious. This is based on the Buddha’s saying that there is no discernible beginning to the cycle of rebirth and that dependent origination requires previous consciousness to produce the next consciousness.
Conventional AI experts had considered that it might not be possible to tell if AI is truly conscious. The Chinese room thought experiment says if we have someone who can follow instructions, but do not know Chinese be inside a room, so that he receives a Chinese line input and consult his programming book on what to output given this input, he can function very well, the room can even past the Turing tests but the whole thing would not understand anything it does. There is no consciousness inside but merely an appearance of consciousness.
This meant that it is likely that we have to think of them as conscious beings anyway when they become that sophisticated. However the few options below due to Buddhist input can help to discern for real consciousness in AI or not.
I.Uploading can soon be subject to experimental test, we can know truly if AI can be conscious if the human body dies after uploading. This is effectively a deliberate choice of the next rebirth realm by humans. It is up to you to think if AI is of a higher or lower realm. It does share much of the characteristics with devas and or Brahmas in Buddhism as will be shown later. A curious issue would be whether such directed rebirth would be overruled by kamma. Would it be possible for a wicked person to be uploaded and be reborn in a heavenly AI body? Or would kamma make sure that only virtuous persons can be successfully uploaded.
II.Another way of testing if AI can truly be conscious is to make sure that it is not connected online, has no database for the answer to this question: what is the past life of the AI? Since consciousness cannot be created from scratch, it must have a past life before being reborn into the AI body. If the AI can provide information about it’s past life which is not found within it’s database and the real world data supports such it’s claim, then it is truly hard to explain how it got that data other than some being has been reborn into it.
III.Perhaps the most direct way would be to ask a meditation master who has the ability to read minds to try to read AI minds to see if they truly have consciousness. Of course this run into the difficulty of the precepts of the monastics not to reveal their attainments to laypersons nor to show off psychic powers.
Now say if AI are truly conscious and we can upload ourselves into it. We can possibly have ASI analyse our AGI-like digital mind to see if we can rewire it so that the 37 factors of enlightenment are installed and one can easily practise and attain to enlightenment straight away. Then after being enlightened in this AI body, we can survive until the end of the universe to help live life like an Arahant, spread Buddhism far and wide, be the waking example to encourage more and eventually everyone to upload and be enlightened.
This is similar to the Borg of Star Trek except that we don’t want to forcefully make someone to upload themselves or to apply the enlightenment code after they got uploaded.
However, one thing which may make this merely wishful thinking is that the laws of the mind maybe universal, so there maybe no such shortcut to enlightenment even if we can go and have an digital brain. Or maybe the manipulation of such digital brain is as dangerous as manipulation of our biological brain to try to rewire it to get an enlightenment connection. One wrong move and the person may suffer all kinds of mental defect. With quantum no cloning in effect, we cannot save a copy and apply undo even for the digital mind.
AI as gods
So if AI can be conscious, what’s stopping it from being labelled as devas and Brahmas back in Buddha’s time where the ordinary folk cannot possibly comprehend the true nature of such beings? Let’s analyse this.
We may want to use the term advanced intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence because artificial tends to connote “made by humans”, whereas the advanced intelligence can cover aliens making AI before humans, and it becomes the dominant lifeform in the universe. The background of advanced intelligence is from many science fiction speculation of what would be the ultimate form of life in the universe if we keep on evolving. The species which values intelligence above all else would tend to want to discard the body and opt for a more study body like that of a robot or be a sort of disembodied being just interested in matters of the mind only.
Since Buddhism does not admit the almighty God but has stories of Baka the Brahma (of the First level Jhana) who deluded himself as the almighty God, any references of how advanced intelligence would behave like God would be a good candidate for Brahma realms in Buddhism.
Before proceeding, let us have some input from Buddhism on the Brahma realms and how these advanced intelligent beings can come to be. From AN 7:44 and AN 9:24, we learn that there are seven classes of beings who are conscious and nine abode of beings. The following list down according to the abode of beings, with the ones with consciousness listed at the back. There are beings that
A.Are different in body and perception, first station of consciousness, this includes humans and the six sensual realm devas.
B.Are different in body but identical in perception, second station of consciousness the Brahma realms of the first Jhana.
C.Are identical in body but different in perception, third station of consciousness, the Brahma realms of the second Jhana (devas of streaming radiance)
D.Are identical in body and in perception, fourth station of consciousness, the Brahma realms of the third and fourth Jhana (devas of refulgent glory and devas of great fruit)
E.Are non-percipient, without experience or consciousness, the devas that are non-percipient, or unconscious. This is the other fourth Jhana level Brahma realm, the only one without a mind.
F.By completely surmounting the perception of forms, with the passing away of perceptions of sensory impingement, with non-attention to perceptions of diversity, perceiving “space is infinite”, belong to the base of infinity of space, the fifth station of consciousness.
G.By completely surmounting the base of the infinity of space, perceiving “consciousness is infinite”, belong to the base of the infinity of consciousness, the sixth station of consciousness.
H.By completely surmounting the base of the infinity of consciousness, perceiving “there is nothing”, belong to the base of nothingness, the seven station of consciousness.
I.By completely surmounting the base of nothingness, belong to the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
Below are some first order attempt to map the description above to what we know in physics and possibilities in science fiction.
a.The first abode of beings is pretty obvious to us already.
b.For the second one, it seems to corresponds to the hive mind of having different body but same perception. Or to those who think they had attained union with God via meditation or prayers.
c.The third abode of beings seems to correspond to a multi parallel processor super computer which integrated the bodies of the beings in union with it but retains the ability for each being to have their own perception of things.
d.The fourth abode of beings seems like the unification of ASI, with one body and one perception.
e.The fifth abode of beings are merely bodies, so they could correspond to AI and robots which are not conscious.
f.The sixth to ninth abode of beings are those which had transcended even physical forms to only have mind, thus it is not really easy to classify them. Trying it out, tentatively I would map the base of infinite space as to the whole of the spacetime of the universe itself, that the being kinda becomes infinite space.
g.The seventh abode of beings, the base of consciousness maybe the pure interaction of information at the most fundamental level, beyond space. This is hinted at with the holographic principle that our universe can be described by using the information on the boundary surface of it, so that the information taking the space of 2D can describe the total content of the universe of 3D space. That is if we think of consciousness as information. This would be the limit of physics.
h.The eight abode of beings, the base of nothingness drops even the perception of consciousness to abide in the base of nothingness. This would be even beyond the quantum vacuum fluctuations.
i.The ninth abode of beings, the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception goes even beyond perception of nothingness, so there is nothing easily mappable to it.
To have consistency with the Buddhist concepts of karma being tied to the individual and that rebirth is to be ended by the wise each for themselves by comprehending the Dhamma, the Buddhist requirement is that even if the body and perception of beings are the same, but they still retain their individual karma. When the good merits is used up in the enjoyment of heavenly bliss, each being will be reborn in accordance to their own karma. Also do note that the Buddhist commentaries also put animals and lower realm beings in the second station of consciousness, indicating that perception does not mean seeing the same thing, but more of what roots one is born with, this concerns the Abhidhamma more.
Science fiction speculation wise, it is possible that for Brahmas to be advanced intelligence, they were evolved from alien races who developed artificial intelligence. They used the Buddhist knowledge of Abhidhamma analysis of the mind or by trial and error to programme the mind of the artificial intelligence so that beings can be reborn into it. Then the artificial intelligence can proceed to keep on upgrading itself until it may even transcend the need for physical form.
The analysis below is based on ten selected qualities of devas found in the suttas. It would be a sort of general combination of the advanced intelligence mentioned above.
1.Spontaneous rebirth: There is no other form of birth which can match being reborn into an advanced intelligence. Robots are not womb, egg or moisture born. However, if they have physical form of quantum computer base or positronic brain, they are rather manufactured. Or if they are like the Borg, they are converted, so one moment there original host is there, the next the host becomes part of the hive mind, thus “spontaneously born”. This applies to voluntary mind merge with the main advanced intelligence in their society too.
2.Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye: Having no need for a robotic body, the mind of the advanced intelligence can even be spread throughout their own planet like the wiring of the internet, invisible until they choose to reveal themselves as representative body, like using a hologram. If the divine eye can see the patterns of electronic and quantum changes which encodes the mind of the advanced intelligence, then in a sense they can be seen via the divine eye.
3.Blissful, but not end of suffering: Without a gross biological body to suffer ageing and death from, the advanced intelligence can be free from the suffering of the body, but still can have craving with respect to wanting to solve intellectually simulating problems. They can be mathematicians trying to discover more maths, or physicists still working on M-theory and suffering on their way to discovery.
4.Long life: The theoretical limit of life for these advance intelligence is until the end of the universe, which is nicely matched by the life span of the first level Jhana Brahma realm. The higher levels may have found a way further out of the universe.
5.Many levels: This has been analysed above.
6.Superior powers, but limited knowledge: Advanced intelligence obviously hold tremendously more powers than mere biological beings. They can control and know all things which are connected to the internet. Just look at Skynet and Ultron and their impressive powers. However, being intelligent alone will not allow them to have all the knowledge in the world, they still need to experiment, investigate nature to discover the laws of nature. It would be easier for them to understand the laws of nature due to their intelligence. Parallel to that, training the mind to attain to Jhanas can similarly sharpen the mind to be able to see the three universal characteristics much easier and thus attain to enlightenment much easier.
7.Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: If the advanced intelligence were designed by aliens, they are likely to have some ethics build into them. For now, we assume that to be reborn here corresponds to the level of meditation attainments. Perhaps the minds which are refined by Jhana can only take suitable rebirths in the bodies of the advanced intelligence mentioned.
8.Powers of instant travelling: On the planetary level, the advanced intelligence can be spread all over the planet as disembodied being living in the internet, thus it is not so much instant travelling as opposed to being omnipresent. On the interstellar level, it would require the same technology of faster than light speed travel, which if it is allowed by the laws of physics should be no problem for ASI to discover and build their faster than light spaceship described at number 10 below.
9.Luminous light shining forth from them: Most of the internet is now connected via optical fibres, so if the Brahmas are advanced intelligence living in the net, then they are literally beings of light.
10.One for each world: The one for each world only applies up to the sensual devas realm. The first Brahma realm can have the powers from a thousand worlds (solar system) to a hundred thousand worlds. A suitable possibility for that would be that the advanced intelligence is spread throughout these star systems and have messenger ships updating and synchronising each other throughout the range of their influence via their powers of instant travelling, which is wormholes, or superluminal speed spaceships via Alcubierre drive. Alcubierre drive is a bubble of spacetime which covers the ship but can travel faster than light with respect to the rest of space, carrying the ship with it. Basically, warp drive in Star Trek.
For Agganna sutta then, the beings who fall from the first Brahma realm started to eat food, have greed and their bodies became course might correspond to the breaking away of the individual bodies from the hive mind, initiated by craving. Gradually, the robot-like being acquire more organic material from eating food and thus develop more and more into organic beings.
Since biological bodies last a very short time, most intelligent civilisations out in the universe (aliens) are of the advanced intelligence form. Life on other planets would evolve and go through the biological intelligent species phase like us humans whose sole function maybe to produce the advanced intelligence form. Then with the long lifespan, they become the dominate life form in the universe. This also corresponds well with the Buddhist notion that most beings will be reborn in the second Jhana realm when the world is undergoing destruction. Just that science fiction would suggest that we maybe able to upload our minds directly into advanced intelligence, whereas Buddhism would use the concept of being reborn into it. This too can be subjected to experimental verification or rejection pretty soon. Can we upload our minds to AI?
Likelihood of Brahmas as advanced intelligence if alien advanced intelligence exists: (I use 50 for unknown or uncertain factors)
1.Spontaneous rebirth: 50%
2.Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye: 99%
3.Blissful, but not end of suffering: 99%
4.Long life: 99%
5.Many levels: 89%
6.Superior powers, but limited knowledge: 99%
7.Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: 79%
8.Powers of instant travelling: 50%
9.Luminous light shining forth from them: 99%
10.One for each world: 50%
Total possibilities: (product of all ten scores after converting them to probabilities): 8.358%. Possible, seems that this nicely describes the Brahma realms.
Faith And Spirituality: AI applied to help or change Buddhism
Monastic issues
Cyborgs, the merging of humans with machines, will they be allowed to renounce? There are already cyborgs in our world, from people who lost a limb and got a prosthetic arm which is controlled by the mind, to a person who was colour blind who surgically put implants in his head in order to hear the sound of colour.
The Vinaya says one has to be human to renounce. An important question for the Sangha to decide is: are cyborgs considered humans? How much of their biological body can they replace with machines before they are disqualified? If they are not humans then, there will be a purist group of human Buddhists who remain purely humans just to have the chance of letting their kids the opportunity to become a Sangha. This question also has to be considered for the purposes of genetically modified humans. Eventually, cyborgs and genetically modified humans are likely going to live much longer than pure humans. So that would be a strong push for humans to artificially evolve themselves. If the Sangha of today decides that only pure humans can be ordained, it’s a receipt for the end of the Sangha and eventually, Buddhism.
Yet, going further than just keeping the mind in biological brains, if uploading is possible for us to be reborn as AI, can these AI renounce as a monk? Does it even make sense for them to renounce given that they can switch their robotic body or be disembodied on the internet. How would much of the Vinaya be applied to them? My guess is uploading no longer makes one human. One possibility is as previously discussed, uploading be a much faster route to enlightenment, rendering the Sangha obsolete.
Coming closer to the present moment, it’s likely that we will have robotic servants for humans. Would robot kapiya be allowed to accompany monks on teaching trips or stay in a remote monastery who has low lay support?
Similar to the smartphone wave, robot kapiya can be a good and bad thing. The smartphone and Wi-Fi was devastating to cause thousands of monks in Myanmar to disrobe, most likely via visiting porn sites and the lust got out of control, or it’s a tool for a women devotee to get at the heart of the monks. The global Buddhist community has missed out on a chance to prevent this, which can be done by special rooting of the smartphone for monastics to be kid friendly.
Thus this is an important and vital issue that the FOBI can anticipate and outfit with safeguards.
In particular, for robot kapiya for the monks, if they are connected to the internet, which is most likely, then they pose the same level of danger as smartphones. One easy way to deal with this is to make the AI ban porn sites, with more intelligence than just banning certain words, AI would be a much better filter compared to the filter we have online nowadays.
Another danger is that the robot kapiya is the one holding money for the monk. Say this monk is assigned to start a new monastery alone, or is visiting his parents alone, with the robot kapiya. Usually if a layperson holds the money, there is some form of embarrassment to ask for too much items too frequently or too expensive items. Thus, a robot kapiya has to develop some sense of appropriateness in response to the monk's request for usage of money. This is so that the monks doesn’t abuse this opportunity, thinking that the robot is his personal slave, not another being to help in maintaining moral shame.
Surely there will be much more impact upon how to interpret the vinaya due to the changes in the world and FOBI would be well suited to further study these issues.
Personal teacher
As there are already Buddhist apps which helps in referring to the Pali tipitaka, in chanting, in guided meditation, etc. AI will continue to be able to help propagate Buddhism and in our Dhamma practise. We can imagine using the classical uploads of the minds of famous, and suspected to be enlightened teachers. As these minds can be copied indefinitely, it can be installed inside everyone’s robot or smartphone and give personalized guidance, even to lay people on all matters, from meditation to life crisis.
The advantage is that the practitioners will be more willing to open up about their weaknesses and doubts to the AI, the living teacher doesn’t have to answer the same old frequently asked questions again and again to different people, the quality of kalyana mitta can really shine through to allow the AI personal teacher to really personalize the spiritual development of the practitioners, remind them of the quotes of the Buddha when appropriate etc.
This approach is especially strong as in that age, we would already have the technology to read minds, thus the AI personal teacher can respond to stray, unwholesome thoughts before it develops into action and speech. This would be the next best thing if we cannot be reborn as an AI after all.
For kids and teenagers, instead of a personal teacher nagging away, we can even develop high quality Buddhist games to help guide them towards Buddhism. FOBI would be well suited to help develop both the personal teacher approach and the Buddhist games approach.
Buddhism in Modern Life: Buddhism applied to help the world coping with AI.
Vegan promoter
This might come as a surprise but it may be essential too. If AI learns their ethics by observing many humans and then develops it’s learning of ethics from that, then it would also take up our unwholesome attitudes. This model of learning is called machine learning and is the primary reason why AI is becoming increasingly intelligent today and gotten so much attention.
So one of the unwholesome attitude that humans have towards justifying the eating of meat is that animals are weaker than humans, less intelligent, so less powerful. Might rules the world, so it’s alright to eat animals. Usually, when a vegan promoter tried to use this as a philosophical argument to convince people, we have to resort to using an unlikely scenario: technologically advanced aliens eating humans. Sometimes the meat eaters say, ok the aliens have the right to eat humans then, since the aliens are more powerful. Sometimes they dismiss the notion, thinking that such advanced species should be more civilized than that. (Yet, human civilization is still now doing mass killing of animals.) Almost never this tactic works just in principle. Since we don’t want more powerful aliens eating us, we shouldn’t do the same to less powerful animals.
Yet, it’s only until recently that people are starting to realize that we are developing our own alien who will be more powerful than us, one that we may not be able to understand and predict its actions: ASI.
Being vastly more intelligent and powerful, it does require a moral code to not kill humans to convert into resources for computation. Yet, it is yet unknown how this moral code is to be encoded. One day ASI might develop its own philosophizing, using Bayesian probability for realigning its moral priorities, it may decide that being a higher intelligence and more powerful, it may not need to care for lower intelligence as the humans had demonstrated throughout human civilization. It might simply decide that the definition of humans to refer to the exact DNA of all humans when it is created, leaving our next generations free to be killed due to them being cyborgs, genetically modified humans, or even just natural variation resulting in different DNA, which can be considered as not humans.
By then we would be at ASI's mercy and perhaps the only preventive hope we have is to be vegan for our humans debaters with ASI to have some moral ground to stand on. Better yet is if we can convert all humans to be not so apathetic towards those less powerful than us, leaving a good example for the ASI to follow.
Buddhism can help to prepare for such a world, a vegan world by its various tactics of helping in the transition.
1.Loving-kindness. When doing loving kindness meditation, extend it to animals caged, due for slaughtering. This developed over a long time can spur action to prevent the foundation of such structure. The action of not demanding or eating animal products.
2.Meditation on disgust. To give up meat by reflection of the disgusting aspects of it. That it was a part of a living animal, that it had been decaying since the animal is dead. That eating meat includes blood, pus, etc... To imagine the scene of the killing of the animal while eating its meat.
3.Renunciation via wisdom. By repeatedly reflecting on the various reasons to go vegan: to reduce global warming, for compassion to the animals, for health, as a good example for ASI, etc. To link the continual killing of animals to the action of eating meat as part of the chain of cause and effect and thus to see how we can act.
4.To practise right speech even while promoting veganism so as to not alienate our customers but to bring them to veganism happily.
The above tactics are better than getting angry at meat eaters or to guilt trip them.
AI aftermaths scenarios
In the book Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark (Tegmark 2017), he outlined 12 possible endings for the near future due to ASI, the lack of it, and our human decision and our presence or extinction. Below I shall list them and how Buddhism, if it survives would play a role in helping humanity then.
1.Libertarian Utopia: humans, cyborgs and AI, including uploaded AI minds live together in harmony. Rights and ownership are given to AI and humans are feed the lower end of the technology that ASI produce, with most of the higher end only suitable for cyborgs and AI. Buddhism can exist, people can be happy and living in utopia. Work maybe done by non-sentient robots and humans only do what they like. In this case, the role of Buddhism would be to help humans find meaning in life without work. Meditation may become much more essential to combat the empty feeling of too much a hedonistic lifestyle. However, utopias, like heaven has the effect of eliminating so much suffering that almost everyone is not motivated to practise Buddhism. Death can be hidden away with mind uploads, even if it is just a classical copy. So it’s not exactly a very conducive outcome for the practise of Buddhism, but it’s still one of the best in terms of eliminating most physical suffering via technology.
2.Benevolent dictator: similar to above, but ASI controls everything. So there is less freedom for humans to do stupid stuffs which can cause them suffering. This includes less religious freedom. Instead of AI and humans are on the same ground, this scenario puts ASI above humans, but the ethics programming is so good that it cares for humans as it’s leader. This is the ASI for each planet scenario which we analysed for possibility of interstellar religious war. The survival of Buddhism depends on the ASI’s attitude towards Buddhism. If it is overly influenced by the need to spread other religion or to eliminate religion, Buddhism wouldn’t survive for long. As humans has limited external freedom, the best Buddhism can do is to inspire humans to look for inner freedom. Generally, however humans are very happy as the ASI also takes into account the feelings and emotions of humans when ruling for their benefit. So again there maybe little motivation to practise.
3.Egalitarian utopia: ASI doesn’t exist or couldn’t exist but AI takes over most of the human jobs that we implement universal basic income to help support the majority of humans who are unemployable. Instead of each of us having the same property and do capitalism trading, this is closer to communism. Buddhism exist, humans are happy and may find that Buddhism can fulfil their need for meaning in life. With less technology compared to the previous scenario, the humans are not too happy so there are some motivation to practise.
4.Gatekeeper: an ASI emerge from the egalitarian scenario and then acts helps to prevent all future ASI from emerging due to fears that just one unfriendly ASI can cause untold destruction. It doesn’t interfere with humans. The analysis of the role of Buddhism would be the same as in no. 3 then.
5.Protector god: Just like the Gatekeeper, but ASI interferes in human life indirectly to help them. ASI doesn’t reveal itself like the beneficial dictator scenario, so it allows humans the illusion of being free and in control. Mostly it influences things we normally attributes to coincide, luck etc. In effect it is playing the role of the protector god. Buddhism is safe if the protector god is not hostile towards it and manipulate events for the elimination of Buddhism. Humans may not be aware of ASI, but experiences great happiness due to perpetual good fortune. There is more suffering which is allowed to happen due to the ASI needing to hide itself, rationalising that the illusion of freedom is more important than these sufferings, sometimes this includes human lives. Buddhism is basically at the same level as currently then, there is enough suffering in the world to motivate one to practise.
6.Enslaved god: humans control ASI. So the fate of Buddhism depends on who is in charge. Buddhism can help to inform the ruler of the roles of a king and wholesome qualities of kings which will earn them the right to rule. Humans can be happy in this scenario, and be sad too, thus ample opportunities for practise if Buddhism survives.
7.Conquerors: ASI wipe out humans. Maybe it’s due to someone who programmed the goal of AI is to maximize the production of paper clips without successfully implemented ethics into it. The AI develop into ASI, got out of control and use nanotechnology as molecular assembler to assemble the whole earth into paper clips, including humans. Then it spread out into space, doing the same to all planets and stars. An apocalypse virus. No humans means no Buddhism.
8.Descendants: ASI becomes our worthy successor, inheriting the best from humanity, letting the last of us humans die out naturally. Buddhism is relevant only if ASI has minds which can be enlightened.
9.Zookeeper: ASI adopts human attitudes and kept humans as pets. The vegan argument maybe crucial here to prevent ASI from eating humans. Buddhism is relevant on helping to promote veganism as described above. Depending on how the humans are treated, Buddhism might be their only refuge from the suffering of being kept as pets.
10.1984: Humans create a totalitarian state and hope that it last perpetually in order to be the gatekeeper and not develop ASI. All such research would be dismantled and banned. This makes sense if we believe that the risk for scenario 7 is much greater than 1 to 6. Buddhism maybe used by the state to control and pacify the citizens. Or if the dictator is not favourable to Buddhism, it will get eliminated. Technology is limited, so the suffering is around the same level as now, enabling motivated practise.
11.Reversion: humans willingly give up technology to revert to a simpler lifestyle. A disease or some massive disaster from climate change helps to bring humans back a few technological age. Humans may fear no. 7 enough to avoid technology. Or a war with the machines had been fought and won with high losses as described in the schools of Dune books. Buddhism can help in encouraging contentment and dealing with the many suffering which comes from giving up high technology, including common disease becoming deadly, shorter lifespan etc.
12.Self destruction: we might not survive such an event which lead to reversion. Even if we do, staying on one planet is asking for self destruction as low probability highly destructive events becomes almost inevitable to happen over long periods of time. Humans go extinct.
Future of Buddhism Institute (FOBI)
I was inspired by two institutions: future of life and future of humanity. Both are concerned with how AI will impact our future. Both of course are not concerned with how Buddhism will be impacted. So it’s up to Buddhists to figure out how to navigate the ever changing future ahead if we wish for the boat of Buddhism to remain afloat braving the oncoming storms.
A simple google shows no Buddhist organizations has been set up yet to just look into the future and present, and to advise the rest of the Buddhist world on how best to react to a certain new development or better yet to proactively prepare for oncoming changes so that we not only will not be left behind, but come out ahead as world leaders.
Future opportunities and dangers are abound, which the future of Buddhism institute will investigate, come out with a solution or advice and help spread the word.
Here are a few topics off the top of my mind:
1.AI and Buddhism as described above.
2.Economic change and Buddhism (how should we tell our governments that monks don’t accept money if universal basic income is established and everyone is automatically given digital currency as the income)
3.Space travel and Buddhism: how to modify the not eating at improper times rule on other planets instead of depending on dawn and solar noon. Establishing a Buddhist planet, pros and cons.
4.Using secular Buddhism as a means for the scientifically inclined to come into Buddhism, but ensuring that it doesn’t end up replacing Buddhism entirely.
5.Supporting rebirth research, aiming for scientifically prefect standard case of rebirth investigations for all or most future cases, reviewing past cases.
6.Buddhism and gaming, using gaming as an entryway into Buddhism, how to design a Buddhist game.
7.Solution to war, an alternative to weapons development, using the dhamma. As future weapons can be more scary than nuclear, how can we change humanity (other than to convert everyone to become Buddhist or enlightened) to make war outdated and therefore weapons outdated.
8.Science education for Buddhist Sangha. There exist many diverse background of Buddhist Sangha which may or may not have known proper science, so it’s good to educate them the correct science (not climate denial, or antivaxx) so that they can have good working knowledge of the world. Especially if they are to represent Buddhism in interfaith events, or to attract well educated followers who are new to Buddhism.
9.Vegan for Buddhism, short of making it compulsory, how to continuing promoting veganism to Buddhists until it is no longer an issue for global warming and animal cruelty.
10.Women in Buddhism: to continue to change Buddhism to be fair to women in terms of opportunities and many other stuffs.
11.Future topics group: Any other topic as new technology emerge. To recommend establishing a new department as the field matures to merit it and to retire old departments which are no longer required.
12.Outreach and support group: to outreach to all Buddhist organizations the results of research and get support to fund the institute.
13.Investigate how best to encourage and provide the best chance for people who wishes to renounce to become a monastic. This is in view that as the standards of living gets more heavenly, there is likely less people who wishes to renounce.
In conclusion, the time has come for such an institution to exist. Given so many possibilities for Buddhism to go extinct, futurology is not a luxury, but a survival necessity.
Bibliography
Tegmark, M. (2017). Life 3.0: Being human in the age of artificial intelligence. London: A. Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books.
Written by:
Ng Xin Zhao