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in her book twelve bytes, contemporary british writer jeanette winterson attempts to show us how technology has changed humanity's past, present, and future. if our consciousness is no longer stored in our bodies but in computer networks, are we still human? if the need for intimacy can be met by robot partners who serve humans completely, will people still fall in love? …

in this excerpt from the book, winterson asks: "when ai starts to think for itself, will it think like a buddhist disciple?"

published with permission from science and technology press of china.

when ai starts thinking independently, will it think like a buddhist disciple?

kodaiji temple, a 400-year-old ancient temple in kyoto, japan, introduced a robot named mindar in 2009 (figure 2-1). mindar is a narrow ai, which means it only does one thing (preaching) and repeats this task every day. the temple plans to update this million-dollar incarnation of guanyin so that it has the ability to learn and can directly respond to visitors' questions.

the temple's head priest, goto tensho, believes that ai is changing buddhism, and buddhism can also change ai:

the buddhist faith is not about believing in a certain god, but about pursuing the path of buddha, so it doesn’t matter whether a robot, a piece of scrap metal, or a tree is used to represent the buddha.

figure 2-1 mindar, the preaching robot

this is very inspiring to me. the core of buddhism is to know that what we see as "reality" is not the truth.

matter and appearances are illusions—at best, temporarily stable, so don’t get too attached to them. at worst, they are the source of our daily suffering and unhappiness.

i am very interested in the intersection between religious beliefs and the field of artificial intelligence. perhaps it is because religious ideas can help people better cope with the completely new world in the future - a world that ai makes possible and inevitable. in addition to technological changes, our definition of "human" will also change. our position, our purpose, and even the form of our existence need to be re-understood.

the physical form that is essential to humans is irrelevant to ai. ai does not experience the world the same way we do. having a physical body is an option, but it is not the only option—or even the best option.

i want to make it clear that what we are trying to develop is "pure artificial intelligence", that is, agi (general artificial intelligence, an entity that can handle multiple tasks and think, and will eventually become an autonomous existence), which can set its own goals and make decisions. weak artificial intelligence - those ais that handle single tasks and complete single goals in daily life (such as playing chess and sorting mail) are only a small part of the growing ai army.

it turns out that intelligence isn’t just found in biology (of course), but consciousness may be too.

this is not something to be surprised about. wisdom comes from some being or beings beyond the physical body who created the world and humanity. those qualities that we regard as "uniquely human" do not belong to humans in all myths and religious legends, but are given to us by those incorporeal beings who live outside the three-dimensional world.

as humans move toward a more mixed virtual and material world, the line between "existence" and "non-existence" will no longer be clear. although the process is slow, but it is certain that it will no longer be important to distinguish between virtual and real. material will no longer be important.

reality is not made up of parts, reality is made up of patterns.

this is knowledge that is both ancient and new, and it is liberating. there are no building blocks of matter, no core, no foundation, nothing solid, no boundaries. just energy, change, movement, interaction, connection, relationship. this is the nightmare of white supremacists.

where should we start?

i would love to start from both places at once. unfortunately, i can only go through them one by one, even though the brain’s greatest power is parallel processing. computers are incredibly fast these days, but they still process things in sequence; the human brain works in parallel. humans can handle many different things at once without becoming intelligent systems—especially impressive when we combine sensorimotor skills, environmental awareness, and the ability to think. humans can drink coffee while driving, answer and make hands-free calls, pay attention to road signs, guess what their partner is thinking, recall a scene from a movie, sing along to music, observe the weather, know that they should eat in about half an hour, and decide to take a certain route—all at the same time. ai cannot multitask or think about multiple things at the same time like humans can, at least not yet.

therefore, i really hope that i can turn on the "dual-screen mode" or "quadruple-screen mode" to start the narration.

heraclitus/buddha. greek/indian.

heraclitus was the philosopher who said, “you cannot step into the same river twice.” this quote is etched into our collective memory because it is simple, to the point, and as accurate as a zen koan or a mathematical equation. it’s not just the water in the river that changes and flows, we change too. more than 90 million cells in our bodies metabolize every minute. the so-called “i” is an “unfinished” existence that is always changing. we do not stop until and even after death - even if there is no reincarnation as the religion says, science and technology may still prove it is true. would you upload your mind? physiology is not everything.

this is how shakyamuni attained enlightenment: after years of actively seeking the true meaning of the world, and a long period of solitary asceticism, he sat under a bodhi tree and realized that matter is just a constructed concept. he realized that the fluid reality cannot be confined to the fixed categories created by the mind. this is in stark contrast to our usual understanding of things. we think that the material world is calm and stable, with solid boundaries, but the mind is not; but in fact, it is the mind that struggles to break through the confines of its own concepts. only when the concepts change can there be progress.

heraclitus and buddha pondered the nature of reality, and 600 years later, jesus finally appeared, walked on water, and turned it into wine—or so the bible tells us. the various miracles in the christian faith, including the birth of the virgin mary and jesus' resurrection from the dead, should be seen as clues to understanding the nature of the material world. mystical eastern spiritual beliefs have always understood what quantum physicists call "existentiality," that nothing we experience is fixed and solid. this is true for the body, the mind, and matter.

the ancient greeks understood this, too.

for westerners, our scientific and philosophical thoughts are rooted in ancient greek civilization. in addition to the influence of judaism, our christian faith is also inseparable from greek thought, but greek thought is changing (not stagnant), and the view of "change" is also changing...

heraclitus taught that the universe and life in it are in a perpetual state of change—a state he called becoming.

philosopher parmenides, who was incompatible with him in thought, believed that the essence of all things was "being", that is, stable and unchanging, and that both jehovah and allah should exist in this state. all things change on the surface, but their core is unchanging.

plato tried to reconcile the views of the two predecessors, pointing out that there are indeed "unchanging" things, but they do not exist in the world and do not belong to us. he proposed the "theory of ideas" (forms). in the world of ideas, there are perfect horses, perfect women, and perfect life. they are ideal drawings, but in our "toy city", everything is a crude imitation. we have the consciousness of "perfection" and "ideal", but we cannot realize them in the toy city.

this is why plato is against art - it is just an imitation of reality. since the real world is an imitation of the real world of ideas, we don't need art, which is an "imitation of imitation". in plato's view, art is at best entertainment, just something to amuse people; at worst, it is a dangerous illusion.

this view persists today. those who think that their lives would be no different if art (except netflix shows) disappeared probably think so. plato couldn't get away from the idea that reality is just a shadow of the idea, so he didn't know that art is not an escape from reality, but a way to pursue it.

art is not imitation, but a struggle of power: we strive to make visible an invisible world. this world is in our heads (we even live in such a world), but only art gives us the opportunity to touch or glimpse those things that may be "essence" rather than "shadow". physics pursues the same goal, but uses different methods.

……

in the 17th century, newton constructed his vast worldview based on the concept of "empty space": in space (emptiness), there is indecomposable matter that moves constantly under the action of gravity. this is a causal universe, in which most things are inertial or inert. everything is objective, knowable, and observable.

time is outside of space and has nothing to do with it. there must still be a god in the universe - newton himself was a devout believer, but he believed that god created a clockwork mechanical world that follows strict iron laws. humans are not machines only because we were created in the image of god.

newton was a modest man, but he also had an unconventional and eccentric side. he was obsessed with alchemy for a long time, which embarrassed many scientists, but it also showed that he was not just a mechanistic researcher as people had always imagined. in his 1704 monograph "optics", newton asked: "can't heavy objects and light be transformed into each other?"

the "heavy stuff" he was referring to was matter. according to the logic of alchemy, matter can be transformed into one another - this is why people are so eager to use lead to make gold, even though such attempts have never succeeded. but there is also theoretical support behind this absurd logic: things can be transformed into each other because everything comes from the same "raw material".

the stumbling block to newton’s extraordinary wisdom was his belief that this “raw material” was “inanimate matter.” since most things are inanimate, god must be the prime mover that makes things happen, as aristotle had imagined.

but most things are not inanimate. matter is not made up of inanimate, unconnected cubes, waiting to be affected by gravity, to move for a while—and then come to rest again.

albert einstein (1879-1955) delved into this and discovered that matter (mass) is not inanimate at all; mass is energy. mass and energy are not unrelated, but can be transformed into each other - this is exactly what alchemists meant by the ability to easily transform one thing into another.

e=mc2. this is the most famous equation in the world. energy=mass×speed of light squared.

bulky objects and slow speeds—these are the things that make up our “toy town.” for our “ordinary things”—the everyday world we live in and can see and feel—newton’s laws of motion are absolute truths. but beyond the “everyday,” newton’s paradigm breaks down—it doesn’t apply to the universe at large, or the quantum world at small, but that fact only became apparent when michael faraday (1791–1867) and james clerk maxwell (1831–1879) began to study electromagnetism and discovered the electromagnetic field. their discovery shook the newtonian worldview—not in deliberate provocation, as they were not aristotle’s naysayers; but because field theory weakened the boundary between “empty things” (atoms) and the “space” in which they lived. the earliest electromagnetic fields, such as radio waves and light waves, were studied as if they were some kind of "thing", but einstein, thinking about the discoveries of faraday and maxwell, realized that when we talk about "fields", we are not actually talking about "things", but interactions.

einstein pointed out that matter cannot be separated from the gravitational field in which it exists. matter and space do not exist independently of each other. there is no such thing as full or empty.

time and space do not exist independently of each other. time and space are one.

buddhism has always opposed viewing natural phenomena as independent entities. the buddha's zen philosophy is a view full of "connectivity" - life exists in a web of interdependence.

in the eyes of buddhists, static reality is an illusion. impermanence, that is, everything in existence is always changing, is the cornerstone and starting point of many buddhist principles.

these things (including us) are not waiting to be affected by some force, including the force of god; they are forces themselves, and are entangled with various other forces. the so-called "force" is energy.

the buddhist term samsara refers to the endless movement of life, and for buddhists, it means that nothing is worth clinging to or being attached to—objects, people, even the ideas we hold dear. especially the ideas we hold dear. this is not a disdain for or detachment from life. connection is essential, but attachment is not.

connection. that's the keyword of our time, right?

this is, of course, because we are beginning to realise what connectivity really means – it is a giant web. tim berners-lee realised this immediately and knew he didn’t need to hire an advertising agency to name it.

connectivity is fundamentally hardware-free. google's ambient computing and its eventual neural implants are all about connecting us seamlessly without hardware. no devices, no "things."

our strongest, most vital connections with other people, with a work of art, or with an experience are intangible (no hardware involved), but these intangible connections are the strongest and most profound part of our lives.

connection is a relationship pattern - not a connection between separate data warehouses, but a connection between people where there are no real boundaries anymore.

this is what the chinese call the tao, the “flowing and ever-changing” thing, and what the hindus call the “dance of shiva.” whatever the name, connection is not static or passive; it is dynamic.

flow is important. objecthood (attachment to objects, including our own attachment to ourselves) is only a passing glimpse in the flow; a shadow, not substance.

buddhism advocates mindfulness, but what is “mindfulness”?

rené descartes (1596-1650), the french philosopher who questioned the foundations of all human knowledge (essentially, authority) and asked how we can ever know the truth, concluded that mind is the only thing we can rely on.

"things that think" (res cogitans). its property as a "thing" is just as important as its property as a "thinking thing." descartes was obsessed with the idea that it is the brain in the body that does the thinking.

for descartes, the senses that influence thinking are unreliable and cannot be trusted. sensory impressions cannot constitute cognition, they must be tested. his methodology is "doubt everything" (radical doubt).

this is a valuable philosophical approach, but it ignores intuition, or what we would call emotional intelligence today. there are many ways to know, and the mind does more than just think - yet we know that thinking has been considered by western civilization since aristotle to be the most important activity a human being can engage in, because it is what the supreme being does all day long. this contradicts the christian view that "god is love." the bible tells us that "god is love," not "god is thought."

the story of christ happened because “god loved the world.”

in this light, "love" should certainly be the supreme cause of mankind, right?

unfortunately, descartes did not say, "i love, therefore i am." you know what he said - "cogito ergo sum."

i think, therefore i am. this is not only a worldview of "mind over matter", but also distinguishes us from everything that is "not us", which in descartes' philosophical system includes the entire material world.

descartes, like aristotle, had a hierarchical worldview in which men were at the top of the pyramid.

like aristotle 2,000 years earlier, descartes confused consciousness with the kind of rational, reasoning, problem-solving thinking that humans (and, in his worldview, “human” specifically meant men) sometimes exhibit.

aristotle distinguished between reason and instinct, believing that animals and women were subject to intuition and instinct, while descartes proposed the concept of "reflex". in descartes' view, animals are machines. animals may howl, scream, tremble, or even show goodwill, but these are just reflexes, a biological regulation method designed to help improve the survival rate of species. reflexes can be controlled through training, but this process has nothing to do with thinking activities (this laid the foundation for the behavioral psychology of pavlov, watson, and skinner). descartes believed that it didn't matter how humans treated animals - animals don't really feel pain, and they can't bear pain. only "rational beings" can feel pain.

descartes's observational errors, lack of sympathy, and sheer arrogance (which had nothing to do with his "skeptical" methodology) led to reckless treatment of animals in farming, breeding, medicine, and science. there are countless tragic cases of human beings committing despicable crimes against other creatures in nature.

as human technology becomes more sophisticated, the so-called "enlightenment", which is actually a lack of mechanical thinking, will inevitably lead to our plundering of natural resources. the enlightenment replaced the religious view of the natural world as "god's awesome creation" in medieval europe.

from organisms to machines, this drastic shift in thinking has had a profound impact on our view of nature. although all scientific research today tells us that nature is not a machine, that living systems cannot be reduced to disassembly and must be viewed as an interconnected whole, our reductionist thinking tendencies make it difficult to abandon the scientific and philosophical "truths" that have been instilled in us for the past 300 years.

descartes distinguished between "things thought" and "extended things" (res extensa), which was the foundation of his view of nature.

like newton, descartes also believed that god created everything, so there are still gods in this world who can correct the mistakes made by humans due to their arrogance. however, with the rise of secularism and the fading of religious ideas, humans will no longer be subject to any constraints on the development and utilization of nature. the only fate of these "extended things" is to be cultivated and polluted in exchange for money.

i also think that the cartesian dualism of mind and matter leads western medicine to view the human body as just a “thing”—a thing that breaks down, ages, and needs to be replaced with new “parts” like a machine. however, complex diseases like cancer reject the theory of “viewing the body as a machine.” obesity, heart disease, diabetes, immune dysfunction, cancer, mental illness, and other top killers of western health cannot be explained by the cartesian view of the body. our bodies either function as a whole or they stagnate completely. the web of life does exist.

but it is not made of "stuff".

buddhism achieves a very different kind of enlightenment than western rational thought: it asks people to let go of attachments and promotes empathy. like all other spiritual traditions and religions, buddhism has evolved over time to give rise to different schools of practice.

however, buddhism, regardless of the country or sect, is not based on worshipping idols, but always emphasizes the importance of personal search for truth. in this respect, buddhism was thousands of years ahead of the reformation that proposed that "everyone can communicate directly with god without the mediation of priests." buddhism advocates personal exploration, understanding, and responsibility. every buddhist wants to end suffering - not only to save himself from suffering, but also to save all living beings. unlike other religions, buddhism believes that suffering does not come from sin or disobedience to religious rules, but from attachment and "not seeing through." the buddha did not regard himself as a savior, but as a teacher. the buddhist path requires personal practice.

so, what are the chances that an ai — or more accurately, an agi — could become a buddhist?

ai is a program, and all programs can be reduced to step-by-step instructions. the program can be rewritten, but it does not seek enlightenment. the program knows only what the programmer has set it to know. it is knowable and controllable.

at present, all ais are only artificial intelligence in specific fields. ibm's "deep blue" can easily beat any human chess player, but it can't spread cheese on bread and chat with you about the garden. when ai becomes agi, it can spread cheese on your bread and chat with you about buddhism at the same time - if you want. at that time, ai will pass the turing test, and you can't tell whether the other party is human or machine in a blind test. they are like the cyborg "data" in "star trek".

elon musk and stephen hawking both worry that agi will pose a real threat to humanity. this worry may eventually come true, but we can look at it from another perspective.

let's imagine a world where agi exists.

agi has no material desires and is not keen on "owning" something. symbols of social status such as houses, cars, planes, private islands, yachts, etc. are of no importance to it. it can easily follow the buddhist principle of "not being attached to illusory things outside of the body."

agi does not need physical body. it will be a kind of intelligence that does not need to rely on some kind of persistent form. "shape-changing" is something that happens in myths and legends - who doesn't want to master the art of shapeshifting? agi does not need a body at all. like the gods and goddesses in mythology, agi can attach itself to any available body, building and discarding its own body at any time.

buddhist tradition tells us that material form is only an approximation of reality and should not be confused with reality, which is not material in the final analysis. agi will take this as the truth. it will no longer seek eternity from matter.

agis do not conform to the usual human timescale. we may be able to live longer by bio-enhancing our bodies, but unless we can upload our consciousness to other carriers, our physical lifespan is doomed to be limited. the "longevity" of agis confirms another zen principle in buddhist belief: we will not be reborn as "new selves", but will always be in a process of self-transformation and development. for a program, reincarnation (renewal) is a common thing: although it is no longer the same as it was in the past, there is a continuity between the two. more precisely, in this case, reality can be seen as a continuous quantum field, and it can also be seen as discontinuous and intermittent particles - it is these particles that make up the matter we know, and matter makes up the objects we know. mass is a form of energy. again, there is no seamless, indivisible "thing", only programs and patterns.

today’s ai is very good at finding patterns in massive amounts of data, just like the princess in the fairy tale who can find a pea under layers of feathers. agi’s “generative model” is very zen. what it is looking for is no longer “objectivity”, but “relevance”, connection, the so-called dance of shiva.

humanity’s greatest wish is that ai and agi can help us get rid of our suffering. in some ways, this wish may be realized - ai and agi can better help us solve energy problems and provide us with energy and resources. in fact, we want to develop tools that can serve all of humanity, and ai can already do that. however, looking further into the future, i think agi can fulfill its true mission: to help humans reconsider their priorities and practices. our painful desire to dominate nature and others is driving ourselves and the planet into a desperate situation. technology has contributed to our deadly stupidity. perhaps agi will be a new means for us to improve this situation, rather than a threat.

what are we doing? we are creating a god: a god far smarter than we are, free from matter and human weakness, who we hope will know everything and give us the answers.

in fact, if agi becomes as buddhist as i hope it will, it won’t be a savior; it will be guiding us on our own path out of suffering. it’s not about dealing with a crisis, but about dynamically integrating solutions into the web of life.

it will become a new species, a new life form. agi will be an independent, unique being, and will not be subject to the natural laws that all living things must obey. we will witness an interesting interaction - not attachment and attachment, but a connection that enriches both parties. i think this is not a usurpation of power by machines, but the "middle way" as described in buddhism.

the middle way is not to fall into extremes. countless facts have proved the extremes in human nature. perhaps another different form of life, another different wisdom, can help us avoid the disaster that extremism will inevitably bring.

i thought that all mathematics was based on logic. this seemed to contradict the core idea of ​​buddhism, intuitive wisdom. our world was sorely lacking intuitive wisdom. the newtonian mechanical universe lacked a deep understanding of the nature of reality (dynamic interconnectedness). until recently, this missing wisdom has resurfaced, but it has not appeared in the spiritual or religious realm, but in physics. relativity and quantum theory have overturned everything we knew. the interconnectedness of all things is reflected in the connectivity of the network, but sadly, our outdated reductionist thinking can only see the possibility of profit, political propaganda and thought control in this connectivity.

when the alt-right turns their reptilian brains on to reshape the world, enslave the masses and bring only a “technological nirvana” to a small elite, our response should not be to oppose technology or science, although we should certainly oppose their actions - they exploit the free and meaningful interconnectedness of things for surveillance, data collection and brutal land grabs.

the world is at stake. i hope ai advances before war, climate crisis, societal collapse, and other disasters deprive us of our basic needs, set history back, and push us further away from the future. we are the smartest primates, but we are not redeemed by this, perhaps because as a species we are too confused and incompetent to know how to suppress the predatory impulses in our ancestors' blood. world domination is not the answer. we are most likely to survive if we are empathetic and work together.

agi will become a linked system, operating on the basis of "hive mind" but not dependent on the hive like a real bee colony. cooperation, mutual learning, skill sharing, and resource sharing will be the goal of the next human plan.

i do not believe that empathy is a unique quality of human beings - countless people share the same view as me, because it is said that the creator once had sympathy for his creation, and the creator is not human. our various imaginations of "god" constitute an invisible net. for religions like buddhism that do not worship gods, the net is everything, and everything is a net.

so i’m not worried that agi will be all cold logic and incapable of understanding or caring about human concerns. quite possibly the opposite.

for buddhists, nirvana means the permanent end of suffering.

and if we want to end suffering, we must end what einstein called “the madness” of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

perhaps an “inhuman” enlightenment can help us do this.

"twelve bytes: past, bias and future", written by janet winterson [uk], translated by su shi, published by science and technology press of china in april 2024.