Ep. 139 - A Buddhist View of A.I. (It Ain't Great...)

In light of revelations about the theft of countless authors' work by one A.I. company (guess which one), Ethan finally talks about a topic he's been requested to cover for a while: Buddhist views on artificial intelligence. He begins by positioning the conversation within the frame of View and Intention, asking the question of what "technology" is and why and how we even want it to progress, along with proposing the sacredness of human labor, wisdom and creativity as a basic Buddhist principle, as well as a principle of right livelihood. He also includes a Buddhist understanding of the meaning of consciousness, and why AI might never meet the standard.

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Notes:

To see some of the energy usage date on artificial intelligence, see this link

To see which author's works have been pirated, see The Atlantic's list here.

To read about The "Suzuki Roshi" Chatbot, read here.

An alternate translation of Suzuki Roshi's famed quote to his students is: 

“Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”