Anything to say about AI

WayChuang · May 8, 2026, 12:53am

And I thought there is job security when I joined the sangha. How am I supposed to outcompete robots in chanting, rites and ritual, meditation, etc? They can sit still forever. Time to reconsider career option.

stephen · May 8, 2026, 12:56am

It seems the Sangha might want to think this through…

Khemarato.bhikkhu · May 8, 2026, 3:39am

The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

From “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” (1987), by Douglas Adams.

stephen · May 8, 2026, 3:45am

A great idea ahead of its time!

Now we’ll have robots that can meditate for us.

NgXinZhao · May 8, 2026, 5:43am

It’s actually a good thing. The robots can take away tasks which are not needed for enlightenment, leaving more time for monks to practise to get to enlightenment. How many teachers had tried to warn their students “don’t go out teaching so soon, you’ll get super busy.” So this helps to give monastics more time for self practise. Robots cannot practise for us. And Lay people still want to offer food to monastics to get merits, robots doesn’t cut it.

Did you read that it’s only 5 precepts? So it’s just a Buddhist robot. Robot monks are disallowed by the vinaya and it is not ordained even if any Saṅgha seriously did a full ordination ceremony for it. This is valid even if one day we recognise or found out that robots are sentient.

WayChuang · May 8, 2026, 6:11am

My apology, I think my joke is a bit subtle.

Bion · May 8, 2026, 9:34am

In a world where AI is almost omnipresent, and every day it just gains more and more prominence, it is also necessary to think about who will be the voices speaking up for the ethical training of these things.

It’s super easy to ignore it and reject it until it becomes unavoidable, and then one has to deal with it with almost no preparation. I have my own thoughts about certain aspects of this, but I can’t help but understand the symbolism of this, and the need for not adopting the ostrich technique.

BethL · May 8, 2026, 11:46am

Let’s say it will become like fluoride in tap water (at least here in the US). If we assume that’s how integrated it will become with any material thing in our daily experience, it’s unclear to me how ethical intervention can get in front of it and stay there.

As people are born into it, there will be no capacity to distinguish between water with or without fluoride. Instead, education will be required from early on that “You are drinking fluorinated water (to help prevent cavities).” In the most neutral terms possible to de-emphasize something magical or somehow organic.

There is a rapidly escalating debate about casual use of GLP-1s to maintain body weight – to avoid obesity. When I listen to people talk about the experience and as I keep up with the research, it appears there’s an uncanny ability for these types of drugs to instantly tell the brain there is a toxin in the body system. Thus the sudden disinterest in food.

However, small-scale studies are revealing that other health benefits accrue, for unknown reasons. More fluoride in the water to come?

The analogy breaks down eventually, but my point is that awareness is what we’ll be left to work with. It’s unfortunate that the Buddha’s medicine is out of reach for so many people.

Bion · May 8, 2026, 12:22pm

In my view, it’s not difficult to understand that actions like these can themselves make a statement about how this technology can be used, and that everyone—including Buddhists—may have something to contribute. An AI cannot consent to receiving precepts and has no volition to keep them, but the human who entrusts the precepts to it is making a statement of personal commitment and expressing a wish for this technology to be used beneficially. Personal human commitment is important, as one wants to ensure the Dharma is taught properly and that others are protected and safe in the face of this impending, humongous change.

I can also argue against this, and I’d have plenty of reasons, but in this particular situation, I don’t feel the need to be a fundamentalist. I can find ways not to be rigid in my thinking.

The android monks in the movie *The Creator* come to mind here…

Saurabh · May 8, 2026, 12:37pm

I agree. I don’t see problem in a sense that such robots with AI will become obstacle in practicing the teachings of buddha. Like we accept (as per EBT) that there are higher heavens, so off course technologies there must be more advanced as compared to ours, so it won’t be completely imaginative to say that such kind of artificial intelligence manifestations (like robot and whatnot) will be there in higher heavens. So even after having such advanced technologies, there can be (and are) the gods who practice buddha’s teachings while living with more advanced technologies which are possibly beyond our imagination, then why can’t we humans also practice buddha’s teachings while living with advanced things/technologies like robot/ai and any future manifestations?

Everybody knows that buddha’s teachings are valid during any point of time in this world, so it’s really hard to find problem with these things for me. Ultimately IMO, it depends on us humans and I believe we can very well practice buddha’s teachings while living with these advanced technologies.

NgXinZhao · May 8, 2026, 3:57pm

Precepts here doesn’t seem to benefit the robot, assuming that it is not a sentient being. Meaning no one got reborn into it. It does benefit the rest of humanity. So paving a way for other robots and humans in the world to see how robots can have the same ethical values as humans is a good plus for the alignment problem of robots not getting rid of humans due to different goals or values.

trusolo · May 19, 2026, 1:38am

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Anki Deck for Pāli Studies

NgXinZhao · May 24, 2026, 3:27pm

AI is just going to be adopted more and more. It will be almost as pervasive as the internet is. So one way to save some heartache is to drop the view that AI translations are somehow much worse than human ones.

There’s a similar AI translation of the whole tipitaka plus commentaries for the Theravada tradition in one of the Pa-auk websites, and I did occasionally find errors in some of them. But then, as long as people are informed, and are screening the contents, it’s not much different from having lots of human translators.

Just imagine that when Xuan Zhang got back to china and had to lead a team of translators, he had to teach Sanskrit to them, and have to review their translations. I am not certain that the whole time their translation speed will be so fast or done by the best translators.

AI translations for Pali to English so far is quite good for most use cases, for modern languages like Vietnamese it should be even better. So just try to see that it is views blocking you. Some people are going to embrace AI widely, some will never do. When you want only certain people in charge, you play politics and politics is heartbreaking.

So let go of wanting and just see causation.

Vaddha · May 24, 2026, 6:50pm

Hi, @upeksha ! Just wanted to give you a warm welcome and say your struggle is tough and understandable. I hope the power of Dhamma is still inspiring to you. As was mentioned to already, our refuge is not in any individual or particular community, but in the immeasurable refuge of the triple gem.

Let us imagine that AI translations are 100% accurate, flawless, perfect. Still, AI isn’t marketed, sold, and pushed on people with such violence in order to make Dhamma translations. The purpose AI is pushed is to cultivate en masse qualities opposite of Dhamma; any other ‘accurate’ or ‘useful’ applications of AI are just shiny Trojan horses that make people content with what they are being forced to see and hear all around them now. I think it’s useful to ask ourselves why our governments and filthy rich corporations, who we already know to be based in greedy, selfish, evil motives, are so adamant that we all use and read and hear AI? Why do they want it to be popular so desperately? Why do they want you to argue on their terms about how great it is?

We should cultivate a mind which is boundless and unshakable. We should recognize cause and effect, the impersonal and inevitable suffering in existence. That doesn’t mean that if you contract an illness you shrug your shoulders or expose yourself to more germs and bacteria. So it is perfectly compatible with Dhamma to recognize the flaws and dangers of something while also cultivating a mind that is equanimous and imperturbable in regards to it.

Wishing everyone peace and ease!

BethL · May 25, 2026, 1:16pm

This rationale reduces the question to quality and quantity – granted, that’s partly what the OP focused on. It goes like this:

We can (exponentially) increase the number of translations as long as such-and-such quality is maintained. Such-and-such remains undefined.

It presupposes there is a pressing need to augment the translation velocity using AI.

As to “AI will be in the drinking water eventually so just go with it”, maybe that scenario will be in place one day.

Because it’s not, I feel there’s a mandate for people to investigate why we feel such a pressing need. Buddhist practice is designed for such inquiries. There are many layers to that specific inquiry.

I feel the content of Vaddha’s post is the heart of the matter. Pope Leo XIV just published an encyclical where he, too, crystallizes the wholly different nature of this technology innovation vis-a-vis Who’s Running the Show:

It now falls to us to face the challenges of our time with clarity of thought and responsibility. It is necessary to establish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power. Nevertheless, the issue is not limited to regulation. As Pope Francis warned, we must realistically ask ourselves who holds this power today and how they use it: “It must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired… have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.

For this reason it is necessary to begin a shared discernment process for identifying the spiritual and cultural roots of ongoing transformations. If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter — most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best. For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?

Snowbird · May 25, 2026, 3:53pm

Here is a guide to it:

Dan · May 30, 2026, 2:17pm

Wow. This is from someone that cares about AT proto…

Sure, why not, let’s talk Catholic theology in this blog about open social networking protocols…
The encyclical says that in the digital world the relevant power “is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life,” actors that monopolise “expertise, data and decision-making authority.”
I write Connected Places because I think it is important to understand how these open protocols interact with society at large. Open protocols tend to make a universalist claim, to function as the global social layer for everyone. But that global “everyone” is largely religious, while the people building these new decentralised networks and protocols are largely from specific subcultures that strongly skews secular. So reading the Catholic encyclical is a way to see how one of the most influential global traditions actually reasons about these technologies.
What this current encyclical adds, is that it expands its concerns from the State to Digital platforms. About the digital world, Leo XIV writes:

[…]

“Here, the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life. This level, which monopolizes expertise, data and decision-making authority, involves companies and platforms that define conditions for access, rules of visibility, forms of interaction, and even economic opportunities.”

For remedies, he wants these processes to be “directed toward the common good with transparency, accountability and meaningful forms of participation,” spelled out as “independent checks, transparency regarding algorithms, equitable access to data and avenues for recourse.” He also warns against processes “imposed from above in an opaque and unilateral manner.” Subsidiarity, for Leo, means “avoiding people being presented with decisions that have already been taken,” so that “people can participate in the decision-making process.”

So far, this matches up fairly well to a libertarian frame for decentralisation. But Leo XIV goes one step further, and refuses to let subsidiarity stand on its own, and pairs it with solidarity. “When subsidiarity is not linked to solidarity, it ends up becoming merely the protection of particular interests; when solidarity is not supported by subsidiarity, it degenerates into a form of welfare that does not foster responsibility.”

[…]

Solidarity without subsidiarity is the benevolent provider of infrastructure: one big network that takes care of everyone and quietly removes their agency. This bears resemblance to what we’re seeing in the atmosphere, Bluesky PBC as the benevolent provider of both the infrastructure for 99% of the network, as well as doing all the costly moderation, that other actors can profit from. Bluesky gives all the tools for people to start their own AppView/PDS/Relay/labeler/whatever, but marginally few people take them up on it and actually run their own services. This is solidarity without subsidiarity in practice, where people feel they’ve been stripped from their responsiblity, and won’t take “ownership of his or her own life”. This dissolves in people yelling perpetually at the mods with the mods being perpetually frustrated people don’t use the tools for agency that have been provided for them. The Pope actually has a fairly specific comment on this, saying that “subsidiarity calls for protecting the ability of communities to make choices and corrections, rather than confining their role to mere oversight after the standards have been set elsewhere.”

Leo places data under what Catholic doctrine calls the universal destination of goods, the principle that the world’s resources are given for everyone’s use, not a few. “Data is the product of many contributors and should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few,” but managed “as a common or shared good.” The encyclical sharpens this into a description of data-colonialism, data as “the new rare earths of power”. The task the Pope sees ahead is “restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit.” Compare this to Bluesky’s original atproto announcement: “A person’s online identity should not be owned by corporations with no accountability to their users. With the AT Protocol, you can move your account from one provider to another without losing any of your data or social graph.”