By Prof. Wasantha Gunathunga Courtesy Ceylon Today

This article delves into the realms of Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and their potential interrelationship. Understanding this interrelationship is crucial in a world where the teachings of the Buddha are often misconstrued. It’s therefore, essential for those engaging in this dialogue to be fully aware of the subjects at hand. To achieve this, it’s necessary to grasp the true essence of the Buddha’s teachings, untangling them from cultural and rhetorical interpretations.

Hence, this article will briefly describe what people today know as Buddhism, what it really is, what AI is, and whether any partnership or alliance is possible with what the Buddha taught.

The writer wishes to share his knowledge and wisdom gained through a two-decade-long expeditious research into what the Buddha taught and his experience as a medical specialist. This expedition was started to find what complete mental wellbeing is to impart this knowledge and wisdom to the trainee doctors. It included practising the Buddha’s teachings and getting into the Path to Nirvana with insight meditation. Hence, what the writer pens here is based on research into what the Buddha taught and his basic understanding of Artificial Intelligence. This expedition also included studying the fundamentals of many other contemporary religions and appreciating their contribution to human well-being.

Buddhism as it appears

In the contemporary world, many Buddhists engage in spiritual activities for temporary relief by being faithful and offering flowers, incense, lighting lamps offering alms, etc. They also listen to sermons, try to be virtuous and visit religious places for a favour in return. This is easier than pursuing a path that transforms a person to attain the final goal, called Nirvana. A lot of priority is given to the fun during festivals while deviating from this more meaningful and stable target. Though these activities provide temporary relief, they are not what the Buddha expected people to practice. Others, lay and ordained, seriously strive to enter the path to attain Nirvana but are either stalled or going on a tangent.

All these groups do not seem to have captured the essence of what the Buddha taught though all of them look for lasting happiness, contentment and peace.

What the Buddha taught

All in the animal kingdom are afflicted with a problem many do not understand but suffer from. This is mental and physical distress that takes many forms, varying from subtle to unimaginably grievous, that persists throughout life fluctuating in different degrees. This distress is felt frequently by many (code named ‘hell’) and less frequently by a small proportion that lives in comfort for long durations (code named ‘heaven’). One never understands fully what the other is going through. Hence, this distress that one goes through is mostly invisible and incomprehensible to others, making the concepts of hell and heaven mostly unfathomable and not discernible on physical scales.

People only know temporary measures to manage this distress that bounces back invariably after a short period of relief.

The Buddha found a permanent solution for this and taught it to people with the inclination and capacity to take it. This solution leads to four outcomes: first, comprehending this distress; second, eliminating its cause; third, experiencing the profound inner peace associated with the final attainment of Nirvana; and fourth, completing the necessary practice in reaching the final target.

Buddhist practice propagates from one enlightened teacher to his students, who will subsequently become enlightened through their own practice. This practice entails a precisely spelt-out mode of training of meditation, including complete physical and verbal discipline (Seela), contemplative exercise leading to a mental quietude (Samadhi) and an ontological self-reflection (Pragna), all three happening simultaneously. This description is deceptively short of the real experience, particularly because this training takes the person beyond the normal cognitive process and describing such experience to another using ordinary cognitive means is deceptive. The cognitive process, our regular operating system, cannot capture it. On this account, the reader is advised to exercise caution in interpreting these terms without experience in the Path. Only personal research in the Path will give this advanced inner peace and ontological wisdom. In what the Buddha taught, there is no serious belief in a supernatural power but a commitment to practice towards a meaningful target. Hence, this method is in line with the basic principles of modern science, experiment-observation-conclusion. A person of any faith can practice this while keeping their original religious identity if they wish.

Nirvana

I reiterate that Nirvana cannot be described using language to convey its true feel and wisdom. I make this mostly futile attempt for the sake of the article and for a minority with the mental capacity and personality traits conducive to taking up this challenge.

Nirvana signifies two major outcomes: profound inner peace and ontological wisdom. The profound inner peace is a quietude that is experienced with a complete cessation of thoughts that disconnects the physical body from the external environment and its own memory, which are the three sources of thoughts. This happens during meditation, and the person technically ceases to exist for this duration of meditation. These episodes give 100 per cent freedom from all distress a person goes through, which signifies one outcome of Nirvana. This article does not discuss how this status is maintained while not meditating.

The second outcome, ontological wisdom, is understanding what happens when this disconnection occurs. This understanding is fourfold. The first is comprehending that myself or ‘I’ is an ongoing interrelationship between the physical body, an array of thoughts occurring in it called the mind and a store of memories. This physical body-mind

-memory trio constitutes an individual, often, also divided into five aggregates, and termed in texts as dukkha. I have used the term distress interchangeably with dukkha in this article. Second, there is a driving force within the person to propel this process and connect the person with the three sources of thoughts: the environment outside the person captured through five sensors, the physical body of the person and the store of memories located in the physical body. This propeller is called desire or thanha. The third understanding is that this process can be halted, bringing total freedom from all the distress associated with its profound inner peace called nirodha or Nirvana. The fourth is that when this freedom is personally experienced, the endorsement that the method of training can deliver this outcome to a person who truly practices it, the patipada.

Both these outcomes occur simultaneously. Once the two outcomes are experienced, it is a matter of how long the person can maintain them during a meditation session. The final outcome is achieved when a person is able to maintain them for as long as he wants.

In daily life, such a person can engage in routine activities without getting attached and dragged into a ruminating thought process. Such a person is called an Arahath and has profound inner peace and permanent wisdom of ontological insight. What is important in this final achievement is that it is possible while living.

Computers versus the operating system in humans

The computer is very much analogous to how the human body, mind and memory operate. Taking from five sensors, eye, ear, nose, tongue and the body, processing in the mind and storing it in the memory for future use is very similar to how a computer works. Computers have input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, camera, scanner and joystick as sensors; processors do a job similar to humans’ minds and hard discs to memory.

The human operating system includes a command centre that is unique to each individual. This command centre selects what to accept from what falls onto the sensors and subsequently processes and stores it in the memory. This system has natural algorithms for retrieving such stored information, advanced decision-making, learning, adjusting reasoning, etc. No two individuals are identical in their operating systems, so diverse, complex and covert are these systems in humans. The command centre is linked and influenced by the transmigration of the mind across many births. This fact is often debated, and I will not expect the reader to accept or reject the occurrence of transmigration at this point. This is because one must know the phenomenon’s details to accept or reject it. In studying matters related to analysing the mind, one has to have sufficient experience on the path to Nirvana, where the transmigration of a mind can be comprehended. Two options are available; either stay neutral concerning it while accepting the ignorance about it or explore it to find out. This method of exploration is spelt out in what the Buddha taught.

Scientists in medieval times developed theories of monism and dualism of mind. These theories are based on thinking using the regular cognitive operating system, which has no mechanism to penetrate into how the mind works. I do not wish to dwell on this area because the objective of this article is peripheral to the body-mind dialogue of medieval or modern philosophers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the technological capability of simulating human intelligence using computers. These capabilities include learning, reasoning, perceiving, problem-solving and language use, to name a few. AI can take some burden off humans and perform certain functions faster and more accurately. It will also perform functions that average humans may not be able to do.

Why AI is required

In a world where the population is growing and expectations are escalating, more facilities for better living are required. Compounded by competition among different entrepreneurs and the quest for supremacy among nations, more high-tech acquisitions are being tried out. The circumstances have created a huge and undisputed place for AI to create a better material world for people.

Similarities and differences

AI systems can simulate this operating system of humans. However, the diversity of the command centre cannot be simulated easily as this command centre in humans has programming transmigrated across an innumerable number of births to come to the present shape. It is too detailed to be programmed by an outside agency, and the method of tracking between births is not yet possible with cognition-based modern sciences. Capturing information from the sensors, memory and hardware of the physical body for routine functioning is programmed and re-programmed across many births and still continuously changing. Even the person himself or an outside agency cannot halt or govern this process in which algorithms are naturally formed, and some are deleted on an ongoing basis.

AI creates an autonomous system of generating information and automating functions in addition to nature’s autonomous systems. Then, the AI systems can stand between the natural environment and human perception, giving a doctored and unreal picture to a person in place of reality. It may create an altered perception of the external world in place of a more real picture that was there before. Is this for the betterment of human civilisation, or for desire-driven more political, economic and socio-cultural requirements? need a broad discussion. The dialogue on AI ethics is already ongoing and will be essential for the responsible use of AI to minimise its potential harm.

However, AI is more likely to create an unreal external world that an individual can get attached to, taking him in a direction diagonally opposite to non

-attachments that the Buddha advised. It will create more desire, aversion and dependence in an artificial system that one-day surrenders to the inevitable destiny of impermanence. This can lead to a chaotic situation within and outside a person.

Conclusion

AI has the capability to replicate a significant portion of human functions. This enables the realisation of materialistic achievements that were previously beyond human capabilities, catering to humanity’s ever-evolving desires. This is an over-expansion of the materialistic world from which we are encouraged to detach in pursuit of stable inner peace, happiness, contentment and wisdom offered by the teachings of the Buddha.

Though machines cannot fully supplant humans, there remains the potential for catastrophic outcomes of AI, particularly associated with weapons of mass destruction due to unforeseen algorithmic mutations or deliberate acts. Hence, the limits of AI and the directions of its applications need serious consideration.

About the author:

Professor Wasantha Gunathunga, Centre for Meditation Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo