Editorial

Vesak, the holiest of holy months for an estimated 400 million plus Buddhists worldwide and countless others who follow the teachings of Gautama the Buddha, will be commemorated next week on full moon day. The usual events to mark the occasion that kept the sublime doctrine alive in this country, especially during 400 years of European rule, are on the cards: the sermons, the temple bells ringing, the lights, the devotional songs, the pandals, the lanterns and the unique free eating houses, all of which provide for a colourful festive time.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe introduced a new dimension to these activities. At a meeting of Buddhists in Moratuwa recently, he focused on the future of the philosophy of Buddhism. He was alluding to the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence), a subject raging in the modern world, and its impact on all religions in a world that is becoming increasingly robotic. A time is coming when humans, their minds and their actions will be taken over by machines that they themselves create, giving these machines a life of their own and a mind of their own.

The President spoke about the environment, about man’s greed and how the world is facing the consequences in real-time today of ignoring what the Buddha enunciated more than two thousand five hundred and sixty years ago. He referred to climate change that is happening with unusually hot weather, as was experienced in Sri Lanka only a few days ago, or unexpected rains and floods and fires across the globe as the world’s atmosphere from industrial developments warms up. On the other hand, he referred to how technology has progressively developed in recent times, from computers to mobile phones to now AI, the trajectory of which is daunting for the future. Speaking on the eve of Vesak, the President spoke of the need to study the correlation between AI and Buddhism. He spoke of what the Buddha taught especially laying emphasis on the mind and its power in shaping the lives of individuals and how ‘progress’ is seen as we know it today. And AI, that has a ‘mind’ of its own, but not a human mind. He pointed out that human desires, unless controlled, would be to the ultimate detriment of the human race.

Both what the Buddha said thousands of years ago—followed by millions of people ever since—and AI of the immediate future target the human mind and its actions. A senior surgeon from Kandy, in his book ‘Buddhist Philosophy and Neuroscience’ and writing to this newspaper (Page 1 of the Plus section), welcomes the President’s call, arguing AI will allow modern technology to objectively analyse the Buddha’s Doctrine (Pali dhamma; Sanskrit dharma).

The Dalai Lama has brought the results of fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) tests from 30,000 hours of meditating Tibetan monks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. These findings, now publicly available, correlate to the Buddha’s teachings, the inference being that most of the brain ruminates about the past, worrying about the future. It is a survival network geared for ‘self-preservation’. A presidential committee of monks and academics is already studying these subjects, and a separate team of university dons is also conducting studies in collaboration between the Universities of Anuradhapura and Peradeniya and the University of Alberta in Canada.

These studies must not be merely limited to academic exercises. Very soon, AI is going to replace humans in employment by replacing the human brain with Artificial Intelligence. If the human brain is then geared with the survival instinct, as the fMRI research tests of the Tibetan monks show, will humankind, for sheer personal survival, be able to devise methods to direct AI of the future in the right direction, for the benefit of medical science, for instance, rather than self-destruction?

Already, climate change is seen as the end of the world unless addressed now. Will AI be the decisive factor—the turning point towards the end of all living creatures? As the Buddha emphasised, it’s all in the mind (Sanskrit chitta) of humans. If humans are then geared for ‘self preservation’, will it collectively overcome the challenges of transferring the human mind to a machine?

AI and LAWS

Whether AI will ever submit to normal laws is a question mark. But there is another set of LAWS—Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems—which are weapons that select targets, destroy and kill without human intervention and are on the drawing boards among the superpowers, raising profound concerns for mankind from humanitarian, legal, ethical and security perspectives integrated with uncharted and apocalyptic outcomes.

Today, as human minds push virtual technologies beyond known boundaries, sophisticated new applications, such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence can be amalgamated into these autonomous weapons systems (AWS) with uncharted outcomes. We already see these weapons at work with Al-enabled drones or Al-based target selection on today’s numerous battlefields, from Europe to Gaza.

Is humanity ceding decisions over life and death to machines and algorithms? How do we stop an arms race of these AI-driven weapons and keep them out of terrorists, for example, in the borderless territory of cyberspace? Without human involvement, can accountability be passed on to machines? How can the pitfalls of these killer algorithms, which are prone to mistakes and bias be avoided? Can accountability be transferred to machines? Human life can be ended by an automated action of a weapon independent of a human mind-driven ‘intention’ (Sanskrit cetana). This has implications for an understanding of the teachings of the Buddha as well.

The very minds responsible for these technologies have warned that they also hold the potential for immeasurable unforeseen harm. Similar to the dilemmas at the dawn of the era of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, we are at another ‘Oppenheimer moment’.

Technology must be harnessed to empower people, not to dehumanise and destroy them. While the West, especially Europe and the United States, is grappling with legislating on AI, they are only beginning to talk on LAWS and AWS. The UN General Assembly as recently as only last December passed resolutions for a review of LAWS. Sri Lanka took the right turn in cosponsoring this resolution.  Humanity is at crossroads. An American author (on page 18) argues that AI pessimists are missing its positives but admits that four out of ten Americans surveyed by YouGov think AI will be the end of the human race. Next week, the UN also commemorates Vesak, a move spearheaded by Sri Lanka’s then Foreign Minister, the late Lakshman Kadirgamar, 25 years ago.

In parallel, and in the Buddhist spirit of peace (metta), nonviolence (ahimsa) and compassion (karuna), it is encouraging to recall that Sri Lanka has been a consistent advocate for global disarmament and humanitarian methods of warfare, including its call to regulate and prohibit LAWS.