Dear Sundari: What is Vedanta’s position on AI? I uploaded a talk by Swami P and it created a conversation about it, which I thought was fascinating and very helpful with studying. It’s pretty mind blowing, really! Could you give me more insight on this contentious topic, from the nondual perspective?
Sundari: AI, like any other delivery system for knowledge available to us, must be seen as Isvara, seeing as everything that arises from the field of our experience comes from Isvara, the creative force behind life. That does not make it necessarily good, or bad for that matter. Like everything else in duality, it has upsides and downsides. We have had this discussion with a few people who insist that AI is helpful in understanding the nondual teachings of Vedanta. But we offer caution when it comes to self-inquiry.
The problem is that there is no way any technology has been or can ever be taught to teach Vedanta the way it must be taught to be assimilated. No algorithm will ever supplant the qualifications and subtlety of mind that is required to not only understand and assimilate nonduality, but to teach something as subtle as Vedanta.
AI is only as good as the man made program it runs on, and those programs are set within the system of thought that is run by Maya, duality. We can tell at a glance when AI is involved in writing Vedanta. It is clever, but it is sterile, without soul. It lacks the light of Consciousness, the light of love as Self-knowledge, that must be there for true dissemination and for assimilation to take place.
That is not to say that AI cannot be helpful in certain aspects of the teachings, such as qualifications and values teachings in the introductory texts. But it will still miss vital nuances that are required to explain paradoxes and remove ignorance. Most importantly, making Vedanta easy is not the way to liberation. Our world today has a very limited capacity for attention, concentration and focus. Most people are after spiritual fast food and not interested in anything that takes longer than a few minutes to absorb.
But if you are truly interested in freedom from limitation, then you need qualifications for self-inquiry. Which means, you must do the cognitive heavy lifting required to understand, memorize, assimilate and apply the teachings to your life. This is hard work. There is no shortcut to psychological or spiritual emancipation. A machine no matter how smart. cannot do the work for you. More on this further on. Let’s first take a look at the whole picture regarding AI.
There has been much heated discussion, even fear, on the subject of AI and its effects on our lives. Though essentially this technology is far from new, the extent of its application is new, and it is setting many alarm bells ringing. As with anything that we view through the lens of self-inquiry, we need to look at both the dualistic and nondual perspective.
From the nondual perspective, fear never enters the equation because nothing touches you as the Self. Nothing in this world is real. As we know, real is that which is always present and unchanging. At the heart of the dualistic fear around AI is firstly the question of whether AI has the potential of surpassing our capacity for thought, creativity, and problem-solving, threatening our human cognition. That which makes us distinctly human, our cognitive relevance, will become obsolete.
Secondly, while AI introduces awe in creating solutions that seem to offer the potential to transform our lives in streamlining how we process information, the deeper fear is that in making ourselves obsolete, we have created an amoral Frankenstein monster that will not only surpass, but destroy us.
AI has and will cause disruption in many fields, and how current technologies are applied, this we know. As much as we chase progress, most people are afraid of change. Since the dawn of human history, innovation has been a balancing act of wonder and fear, even dread. Since the creation of our first crude tools, the discovery of electricity, the first train, car or flights of airplanes, to our computerized age, each technological breakthrough has promised to elevate humanity while simultaneously posing grave risks. Everything in the world of duality is subject to this, without exception. That is the nature of the world we live in.
Our first tools could feed and but also kill us. Electricity powers our world but just think what would happen if a solar flare where to knock out the electrical grid. We are now so dependent on electricity that everything would come to a standstill, causing total chaos worldwide. Cars, trains and airplanes transport us but are also tools of war. Computers and the internet connect us but can also threaten the moral fabric of society. Cellular phones connect or imprison us. Ever wonder why we call them ‘cell’ phones? There has always been a high price to pay for progress and convenience.
The one reassuring factor was and is that while these innovations and advancements in technologies pose serious implications for misuse, they function as extensions of human capabilities, operating within the boundaries we set and control. One constant remained. The unique spark of self-reflectivity, imagination, memory, judgment, creativity, the capacity to think, innovate and solve complex problems was not about to be surpassed by a machine that could ‘outthink’ us.
Not anymore, it seems. The genie has been let out of the bottle, and we can never get it back in again. For the first time in history, we are no longer building tools to augment our abilities, which is what we have done so far. Now it seems that AI has the potential to eclipse us. This shift doesn’t just disrupt our world industry. It challenges the core of our deepest fears.
AI operates in the realm of cognition, not merely executing tasks but learning, reasoning, and even generating creative content. For instance, being an ‘artist’ these days is just a matter of feeding information into an AI system and out comes the creative result. Want to try your hand at abstract, surreal, realism or any other type of artistic expression? No problem. Some of it is amazing, but is it art? Well, yes and no.
Artists like Marcel Duchamp rocked the art world when he bought a toilet, signed it, and called it ‘conceptual art’. So why not AI art? But what about generating other false images? In many cases it is hard to determine what is a real or fake image, or video. There is so much potential here for adharma. We are already seeing this happen, and it is of grave concern.
The same applies to many other fields, such as scientific, medical and law. A scary thing for many is that machine learning models and neural networks have begun not only to replicate but in some instances, exceed human cognitive/creative functions. From creating art, writing news articles, medical, law or scientific papers, to diagnosing diseases, AI systems are performing tasks very well that were once thought to require uniquely human input and judgment. This is alarming and disturbing in many ways, not the least of which is because here too there is much room for adharma. AI can easily be abused, and can also get things very wrong, with serious implications.
These are profound considerations. Yet in some fields, such as neuroscience, but many others too, the potential of AI promises to solve problems we’ve struggled with for generations. From inserting chips in the brain that will help paraplegics walk again with the help of an exoskeletal apparatus run by AI, or ‘speak’ through a machine that records their thoughts, to curing diseases, optimizing complex systems, and even mitigating or redefining long-standing global issues, AI’s ability to process hyperdimensional patterns and vast data sets, we can uncover solutions that were previously beyond our grasp.
But on the other hand, this isn’t just about automating repetitive or physical tasks. It’s about the very processes of reasoning, judgment, creativity, problem-solving and emotional insight being mirrored, and in some cases outdone, by machines. What does our role look like in an age where our intellectual dominance is no longer guaranteed and machines can not only do many of our jobs better, but can dominate us?
What happens to the moral or ethical component inherent in judgment, can a machine be taught to be fair and just, to consider the good of the whole and make dharmic choices? This existential anxiety isn’t just about losing jobs, fudging scientific papers, misdiagnosing disease or manipulating images. What makes this moment in history so unique is that AI threatens the very essence of being human, and how our societies function.
Historically, we’ve accepted obsolescence as part of the cycle of innovation and, in most instances, embraced it. Outdated tools are consigned to history as new ones replace them. But when the “tool” at risk of obsolescence is human cognition itself, we have entered uncharted territory. AI’s capacity to mimic and potentially surpass our intellectual faculties puts us in a vulnerable position, one where we must confront our fears and limitations, and grow past them.
We may be entering what some term a ‘post-neocortical era’, where human cognition is no longer the central driver of innovation and progress. AI, with its ability to function beyond human cognitive constraints and grow ever more capable of learning, more accurate in reasoning and even in creating, is not just accelerating technological development. It is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of intelligence itself.
This isn’t merely the next chapter in the evolution of technology; it’s a redefinition of what it means to think, raising questions about our future role and relevance, and how we choose to integrate or compete with this new form of cognition. Clearly, the fact that this technology has arrived must mean that human cognition needs to evolve, and this is not new. Throughout history, even prior to the industrial era, technological advancements meant machines surpassed our physical, and often our intellectual, capabilities. We had to grow our idea of who we were and learn new abilities to ‘keep with the times’.
Up until recently, while these advancements came with much fear, upheaval and displacement, they never rendered us obsolete. Instead they liberated us from the drudgery of menial tasks and limitations, improving the quality of our lives immensely, elevating human ingenuity to new heights of creativity and potential. We don’t have to go too far back in history to find examples of just how much we have progressed and improved our standards of living. Just think how computers and cellular phones changed how we work and live, to name just a few more recent world changing technologies. AI represents a similar but in many ways, greater shift.
Our future lies not in competing with it but in using it to our advantage, leveraging what makes us intrinsically and uniquely human: consciousness, soul, creativity, empathy, compassion, intuition and the ability to see patterns and connections that machines can only mimic, at best. AI may be unparalleled in its efficiency, but it will never be intuitive, conscious or self-reflective. Nor will be able to love and be loved. All of which are essential components of a meaningful life, one of knowledge and learning. We can teach machines to mimic us to the extent that we fantasize they are conscious. Science fiction has had a field day with this idea for a long time. But it will always be up to us to ask deeper questions, to envision new ideas, to imagine, to love and engage in higher-order thinking.
It is quite certain that no AI will ever write or understand an Upanishad, though it can mimic how to write poetry or anything else. Mimicking will never replace our ability to embody and live nondual knowledge, to live the bliss of the Self. AI may be brilliant, but it is nonetheless, an object known to me, Consciousness.
Ultimately, AI doesn’t and never will subjugate human cognition because it cannot learn our essence, Consciousness. At the same time, while AI will never do the work of self-inquiry, nor free us from bondage to objects, we don’t have to fear it. Just as earlier innovations expanded what humans could achieve, we can put AI to work so that machines do the heavy cognitive lifting in areas that leave us free to explore the farthest edges of our intellectual, spiritual and creative potential.
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
