Yes, creepy AI is largely disappointing to me

[josephzizys]

I said in another thread i would not engage in this topic again but there are so many dire problems with this post I cannot in good conscience remain silent.

“Let’s Make SuttaCentral 100% AI-free Forever”

@BethL

Over a period of about two months many of us closely followed this series. Speaking for myself, I read them; I reviewed most of the linked resources; and I gave thought to the logic as Bhante developed it over the course of the 16 essays.

Oh. My. God.

Hello @BethL , I am a regular poster here on the forum and I cannot recall ever speaking to you before, perhaps my memory is poor, but regardless, hello!

I come to this site to study and discuss early buddhist texts.

Over the last couple of years i have devoted several thousand hours and several hundred thousand words to reading, studying, discussing, arguing about and thinking, as deeply as ive ever thought about anything before in my life, these texts.

The bulk of my intellectual life is on this forum.

I have an enournous respect and gratitude to @sujato for his profound contribution to english language study of the pali texts and more, suttacentral, bhantes translations, this forum, they are all, wven taken individually, hugely inportant contributions to the field, collectively they raise him into the pantheon of Muller, Bodhi , Rhys Davids and KR Norman, IMHO…

I read his pali related posts with an eager and keen interest.

I even read his short fiction, occasionally.

I did not read his sequence of 16 LENGTHY ESSAYS ON AI! A subject, while im sure important, seems to me to be in the “hyperbolic” phase of its life, both amongst its supporters and its detractors.

@BethL

it seems to me that we landed with a common understanding, generally speaking, of the spirit of the proposal by the time Essay #16 was posted and discussed.

So when you say “we” you mean the cohort of people engaging with this collection of 16 essays about AI, a cohort that does not include me.

I did not engage because the essays where clearly OFF TOPIC, for me at least, and to be clear, for a site that purports to be about EARLY BUDDHIST TEXTS, a topic i AM interested in, and read about vociferously, here and elsewhere.

@BethL

I don’t doubt there’ll be much wiggle room for people when this proposal is fully implemented as a policy.

Right, so you, who read the threads on the off topic subject are in no doubt there will be some strict new policy that curtails the good faith communication that i use tge forum for. Great.

@BethL

It seemed particularly disrespectful and irreverent for someone who regularly shares their research on SuttaCentral to suggest that, apart from their own threads, they don’t really pay attention – at all – to the larger community of SuttaCentral discussions. Is it overreaching to expect this online platform – any online platform – to coalesce around some core values?

I read, and contribute, to plenty of threads other than my own, once again i am not sure i have ever seen you contribute to any of them, but maybe my memory is failing me. I just tend to contribute to threads that are about the early buddhist texts, the subject matter of this forum, and not threads about speculative politics regarding artificial intelligence, something that pretty far from what this forum purports to be a out.

Your suggestion that in behaving as i do i am being “particularly disresprectful” is grotesque and offensive.

@BethL

I mean, what am I missing?

You are missing that there are litterally thousands of threads here and literally no one has or can read them all, and you are confusing the subset of people who are interested in @sujato as thier religious leader with the people who are interested in @sujato as a scholar of the EBTs.

@sujato

Nonetheless, we do ask that people use our work in the spirit of the Buddhist tradition. This, in my view, rules out any human-imitating AI applications such as a “Buddhist chatbot” or “AI translations”. The Buddhist tradition has always regarded translation as a sacred activity, and the texts produced as the Buddha’s words. Translations require not merely linguistic knowledge, but a deep understanding of the Dhamma and its expression.

I therefore ask that our content be left out of such projects.

This is a perfect example of how deeply problematic some of the language on this site has always been.

Of course we should defend @sujato and @cdpatton and @Brahmali 's collective right not to have thier labour stolen by corporations and misused.

But the idea that I should confine my study of the early buddhist texts to “the spirit of the buddhist tradition” , and defer to the idea that therefore translation is a “sacred activity”, if taken as anything more than hyperbole is manifestly reactionary, fundementalist, anti-ecumenical, and anti academic.

My religious convictions are my own business, and they have nothing to do with my scholarship, and if they do thats private.

The constant invocation of specifically religious, and specifically buddhist justifications for the rules and policies here is DANGEROUS. It militates against free speach and open discussion, emboldens the (now many, perhaps even a plurality) of posters who use this forum for purely personal religious purposes to attack and denigrate scholarship that offends thier personal.convictions as “wrong view” or “wrong speach” and it has a chilling effect on those scholars whoay have differing religious sentiments, or at least would like to keep them.seperate from thier scholarship, from feeling like they can post in an honest amd forthright manner here.

It is a shame, and frankly a frightening development, to see people openly advocating for the

@BethL

platform – to coalesce around some core values?

When those values relate to methadology of scholarship and sources being curtailed in the name of “buddhist tradition”.

Ive said it elsewhere and i will say it once more. This forum can be about genuine scholarship of early buddhist texts or it can be a forum for practitioners of Therevada-ish Buddhism, maybe it can even be both, but the current trends, of greater and greater use of religious rhetoric around who should be permitted to be in the commumity and what they should be permitted to say, is moving this board in one direction, and its not a direction i like.

I hope everyone in the meeting thinks seriously about the difference between scholarship and personal faith.

Metta