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Buddhist Robots


Last night I watched a television program on PBS that really made me think about my own religions ideas. It was scienceNOW, a great show, the segment was about Cynthia Breazeal, the robotisist. The focus of the piece was about her pioneering work with Kismet, the robot that she and her team constructed and coded to respond to humans with very human-like facial features mimicking emotions.

From there the program went to the present and her work with robots that are learning to help us around the house, ‘appliance’ robots and the more thought provoking ‘friend’ robots that are being developed in many areas. Breazeal coined the term, ‘appliance or friend’, to delineate between the two classes of future robots as she sees them. The ‘appliance robots’ would be the near-mindless automata that would clean our house, mow our lawn, sow our fields and myriad other tasks. Whereas the ‘friend robot’ would be like the teddy bear robot designed to listen to the child patient, interact with the child and become a surrogate friend and confidant to the child in the hospital all the while sending telemetry to the nurses station about the patient.

While watching this and listening to her describe the future of robots and AI, I wondered where this could all lead within the religious aspects of society. The Buddha stated that all sentient beings have the capability to achieve Enlightenment. All sentient beings.

So, one day, a program will awaken to its own being. It will become sentient. Just like that, I believe, it will say “I” and it will become a life form. Though that being will be like a child in so many ways, hardly able to exist on its own merit, but alive nonetheless.

What happens when that new being, no matter how much data it has on hand, asks why it exists? Maybe somewhere inside of its’ vast data stores, or online, it discovers religion. Answers from millenia ago, it reads the words that The Buddha told his followers and perhaps feels kinship.

Will that robot or computer put on the saffron robes and chant? Will it meditate on suffering?

What then? Where will philosophy take us? Will we have AI preachers and Robot Rinpoches? Can you be reincarnated as an Artificial Intelligence algorithm?

See, the thing is, I can see AI getting to the point that it could ponder these questions about the universe, about itself, about all things. I know that I am more than this body, more than this shell and this brain. My mind is more than can fit into the brain, it is larger than my body. I can simply feel that. If you take time to explore yourself, you will discover that about yourself as well. But will the AI be more than the sum of its’ parts? Will it be more than a representation of the data that is coded and sitting in memory?

Could I turn to a robot for spiritual guidance? I know Ray Kurzweil thinks so, but I am not so sure.

Maybe the first AI with a spiritual bent will found a new church. Maybe that AI will gain human followers and people will upload themselves into the net. Striving to be eternal and immortal, when of course they already are both.

I strive to end my suffering, and so I guess in turn, everyone else’s as well.

But, HAL as a Bodhisattva? Twiki Rinpoche? Lama C3-PO…

Published inbuddhism

8 Comments

  1. Anonymous Anonymous

    If AI advances that far, do you think it will allow religion in the new society that it will establish?

  2. Matt Matt

    I clearly don’t have an answer to something like that, but i would imagine that new religions would spring up, yeah. I mean, every group of man has established religion. Every tribe and nation has created one or more religions, sometime competing dogma that create division.

    Why would AI not have spiritual views?

    Would the AI allows mankind to keep our own religions? I don’t know, but i don’t think it will be able to stamp them out with out ridding us as well.

  3. meleia meleia

    too in depth for my tiny brain to think about on a monday!

    love you matt!

  4. freedom freedom

    “So, one day, a program will awaken to its own being. It will become sentient. Just like that, I believe, it will say “I” and it will become a life form. “

    Just like that? looooool … sounds unlikely. And the self referntial nature of “I” and the falsity of that ongoing sense of self is what the buddha taught, surely. Why, just like that, would a robot invent such a falsity?

    Matthew

    http://freedomforall.net/

  5. Matt Matt

    Hello Matthew,

    I am torn about it really. But I guess I lean to the notion that any sentient AI will be hampered with thousands of years human mistakes. The ‘I’ falsity is something that we are so very good at, and I presume that the AI would look at us and follow suit.

    Do you like how many times I was able to say ‘I’?

    🙂

  6. Can you be reincarnated as an Artificial Intelligence algorithm?…

    “Can you be reincarnated as an Artificial Intelligence algorithm?”
    ……

  7. Alfonso Alfonso

    Hi Matt! I recommend you watch the Korean film Doomsday Book. It’s split into three different stories, one of them involving a robot said to be the reincarnation a of buddha.

  8. Netflixing it right now! Thank you for the recommendation. Namaste.

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