When it comes to the question of artificial intelligence, different religions approach the subject very differently based on their understanding of the cosmos and humanity.
For religions like Christianity artificial intelligence presents a challenge because Christian theology relies heavily on the idea of soul. Consequently, many Christian authors argue that strong artificial intelligence, understood as having consciousness and self-awareness indistinguishable from human, is fundamentally impossible. In order to truly possess, rather than imitate, human qualities it would need to acquire a soul, which can only be created by God.
Other religious traditions see the topic differently. Of particular interest in this regard is Buddhism – a religion that assumes neither soul nor God and is uniquely positioned to embrace the concept of artificial intelligence. Indeed, it is not a coincidence that elements of Buddhism appear from time to time in cyberpunk genre – Buddhist authors themselves have been discussing artificial intelligence since at least the 1970s.
Masahiro Mori: Enlightened Robots
One of the first people who explicitly addressed this topic at length was the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori is probably best known for his hypothesis of the uncanny valley, according to which human-like things (for example, androids, CGI characters, or prosthetics) are likable only when they are not too similar to an actual person but evoke a feeling of creepiness when they become almost, but not quite, perfectly human.
Aside from his work in robotics, Mori was a prolific Buddhist thinker and dedicated his 1974 book The Buddha in the Robot: A Robot Engineer’s Thoughts on Science and Religion to formulating a distinctly Buddhist approach to robotics. Writing from a Zen-inspired perspective, he argues that there is no substantial difference between natural and artificial intelligence and that machines, just like humans, can, in principle, attain the enlightenment.
I first began to acquire a knowledge of Buddhism through a study of robots, in which I am still engaged today. And it may surprise you even more when I add that I believe robots have the buddha-nature within them – that is, the potential for attaining buddhahood. What connection, you may want to ask, can there possibly be between Buddhism and robots? How can a mechanical device partake of the buddha-nature? The questions are understandable, but I can only reply that anyone who doubts the relationship fails to comprehend either Buddhism or robots or both" (Mori, 1981, p. 13).
The argument here is rooted in a long-standing Zen belief that the Buddha-nature is the only true reality. No material objects or individual minds are real; deep down everything is just the universal mind in the state of enlightenment. Or, to put it in the words of the authoritative Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki (1999, p. 48),
If something exists, it has it own true nature, its Buddha nature. In the Parinirvana Sutra, Buddha says, “Everything has Buddha nature,” but Dogen reads it in this way: “Everything is Buddha nature.” There is a difference. If you say, “Everything has Buddha nature,” it means Buddha nature is in each existence, so Buddha nature and each existence are different. But when you say, “Everything is Buddha nature,” it means everything is Buddha nature itself.
If individual human consciousness is an illusion anyway, there is not much difference between human and machine intelligence in that neither is truly real. If anything, seeing how intelligence can be artificially constructed from simpler elements should help us realize the illusionary nature of our own selves.
There is also no difference between mind and body, which makes traditional versions of mind-body problem irrelevant in Buddhist context. Here is how Mori recalls a conversation with a Zen monk about insights from modern neuroscience and robotics and their connection to Buddhist doctrines (1981, p. 35):
Recently I visited a Zen temple and had a long talk with the priest. In the course of our conversation, I remarked, “The more I study robots, the less it seems possible to me that the spirit and the flesh are separate entities. . . . The idea that the body is some sort of container that the soul settles down in, only to move to different quarters after the body dies, seems to me unthinkable.”
The priest gave me a Buddhist explanation. “To split the body from the spirit gives rise to what we call discrimination,” he said. “Discrimination divides things into good or bad, useful or useless, and sets up hard-and-fast rules that enslave people. Buddhism abhors the idea of dividing things in two. Buddhism combines the spirit and the body into an entity.”
Dalai Lama XIV: Bodhisattva Can Become a Robot
The interest to artificial intelligence is not limited to Japan. The 14th Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism well-known for his interest in neuroscience and philosophy of mind, spoke about artificial intelligence on multiple occasions. For example, the 1992 collection of conversations with the Dalai Lama contains the following interpretation of AI from a Buddhist standpoint (Hayward et al., 1992, p. 152):
The consciousness doesn’t actually arise from the matter, but a continuum of consciousness might conceivably come into it. . . . I can’t totally rule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer. . . . There is a possibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life [with computers], then the next life… [he would be reborn in a computer]…
Later, in an interview appearing in the 2006 documentary TechnoCalyps, the Dalai Lama developed this topic further arguing that not only a possibility of a conscious machine posits no theological difficulty to Buddhism but that it could eventually be possible for the Dalai Lama himself to reincarnate as a robot.
Eventually, new type of human being [appears], due to these machines, something, welcome, no problem. If that comes and then a reincarnation of Dalai Lama also may be one of like that.
The importance of this statement comes from the fact that in Tibetan Buddhism people believe that the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, an enlightened being who returns to earth from generation to generation to provide people with guidance. In other words, followers of Tibetan Buddhism consider all Dalai Lamas the same person and there even exist special ceremonies related to finding the next incarnation after the death of the previous one.
The possibility of an immortal robotic Dalai Lama opens a new avenue for reimagining this tradition – after all, why bother finding the next incarnation if Avalokiteshvara might be able to receive an imperishable artificial body?
The Robot-Monk of Kodai-ji
While some, like the Dalai Lama, talk about artificial intelligence from a more theoretical perspective, others believe that the time for religious robots has already come. This is the case with people behind the android Mindar installed in seventeenth-century Kodai-ji Zen temple in Kyoto in 2019. According to the temple’s website, this robot – just like the Dalai Lama – is a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, or Kannon, as this bodhisattva is called in Japan:
The Bodhisattva Kannon, the embodiment of compassion and salvation, can transform into various forms for the benefit of those who seek refuge. In this age of advanced technology and material abundance, the Bodhisattva Kannon has manifested as the Android Kannon Mindar in the land of Kodai-ji Temple in Kyoto, for the many people who still suffer and struggle.
The monk of Kodai-ji temple Tensho Goto, who came up with the idea of Mindar, initially had a grand vision hoping to digitally revive the Buddha. However, his plan had to be scaled down due to technical limitations. As Daniel White and Hirofumi Katsuno recall in their paper (White et al., 2021),
Gotō explained to us how he at first wanted to use machine learning to recreate the historical Gautama Buddha, but when he spoke with engineers at Google and Microsoft, they said this could not yet be done.
Still, the monk remained quite optimistic about the robot and considered new technologies a way to transcend human limitations. As he and other members of the team in charge of Mindar pointed out to White and Katsuno, “in the age of technology no better way existed to express the Buddhist teachings than a robot unbound by attachment to a physical body.” Elsewhere, Goto argued that
The fundamental difference is that us monks will die one day. In the future, I hope that Mindar will learn countless things and evolve to become an expert (on Buddhism). I want it so that as it gains more information and learns more, it can help to resolve everyone’s problems.
For now, Mindar is basically a high-tech temple statue that can recite sermons for the audience. Still, even if some might see it as nothing more than a provocative performance aimed to attract the youth – and it certainly has this dimension – we should not forget that this experiment is rooted in decades of Buddhist philosophy of artificial intelligence.
Robots and the Nature of Religion
The story of Mindar invites us to think about the nature of religion. One quote that I especially enjoyed came from Hiroshi Ishiguro, the Mindar’s engineer, who explained his understanding of this project in the following words:
The temple is a kind of virtual reality, I think. We can have many kind of imaginations about the world, hell and heaven. Therefore, I think that a temple is the best place for studying new types of virtual realities with our technologies.
It is a fascinating way to think about religion. Here, it appears as a technique of constructing imaginary worlds in which believers dwell. For centuries, these imaginary worlds were built through various religious practices, such as meditations, asceticism, and prayers, as well as through religious art. Technology, too, has always played a role in this, from moving statues in ancient Greek temples to complex engineering of Gothic churches. However, nowadays technology can materialize these religious worlds with unprecedented effectiveness, potentially providing completely new opportunities to initiate people in religious worlds.
References
- Hayward, J., & Varela, F. (1992). Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind. Shambhala.
- Mori, M. (1981). The Buddha in the Robot: A Robot Engineer’s Thoughts on Science and Religion. Kosei Publishing.
- Suzuki, S. (1999). Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Weatherhill.
- White, D., & Katsuno, H. (2021). Toward an Affective Sense of Life: Artificial Intelligence, Animacy, and Amusement at a Robot Pet Memorial Service in Japan. Cultural Anthropology, 36(2), 222–251.