Dear Sundari
You spoke about AI in your talk last Sunday, could you please send me the excerpt from it? I found it so helpful. Thank you!
Sundari: Today the big anxiety is about AI. Have we created a Frankenstein monster that will take over and make us cognitively redundant? OMG! Yesterday I received a link to a talk between a person and Google’s Gemini. The friend who sent it, a Self-realized person, mind you, said that AI is going to shake humanity up and reveal that the mind is nothing more than a collection of experiences. Just a bunch of thoughts.
My reply was well, yep. What’s new? This is what the nondual teachings of Vedanta point out right up front. The mind is not real, and its problem is it thinks it is. It does not know the difference, or even how to discriminate between, what is real and what is not because it relies solely on inference and the senses as a means of knowledge. None of which are capable of revealing the nondual Self, Consciousness, the witness.
AI is just a reflection of that, as caught up in mithya as are the humans deluded by Maya who ‘created’ it. It is indeed a very interesting game that Isvara plays with the mind, and it always has and always will shake things up. With AI, what’s even funny if you think about it, is that the jiva identified with the reflection of consciousness in the mind is getting fooled by the reflection of the reflection! Of course, nothing will ever change the fact that you, the witness to all the fun and games, are unaffected. What makes things so beautiful and interesting, as well as so difficult for us as humans, is the ability not only to think and feel, but to know that we are thinking and feeling. Self-reflectivity allows us to objectify the mind.
Though it seems like AI has this capability, it is just a reflection of ours. It can simulate thoughts and emotions thanks to the sophistication of the technology that runs it, but it is not, and will never, be, innately conscious. Just like our human consciousness is dependent on pure impersonal Consciousness, to exist, AI is dependent on our consciousness to exist. If you doubt this, just ask yourself what will happen to AI if you switch off the power circuit it relies on?
Can AI get up and walk over to switch it back on again? No, clearly not. Just like Isvara can pull the plug on our body/mind and it’s tickets for this incarnation, we can pull the plug on AI. It’s just a machine. It will never know that it is thinking and feeling though it can talk the talk, thanks to the human created algorithm that runs it. No other sentient being has the faculty of being conscious of thinking and feeling. It allows us to evaluate what goes on in and around us, to make assessments, to take or avoid action. This affords all that is incredible about human endeavours, both positively and negatively.
Om tat Sat
Sundari
