Mad monk?

Early human communities faced all kinds of terrors. Drought struck, harvests failed. BanditsA robber or outlaw. ravaged their lands. Earthquakes buried them alive in their homes.

They responded to these nightmares by giving the cruel randomness of the world a kind of will. If disease blighted their crops, this was the work of the god of agriculture. If their homes were flooded, the river god was to blame.

The advantage of this was that gods could be bought off. Making the right sacrifice might stave off disaster for another year. Fate was now within human control.

Today we face new terrors, no less nightmarish in their threat and scale. And one man thinks the answer is the same as it was 12,000 years ago.

Soryu Forall is a BuddhistSomeone who follows the teachings of Buddha, an ancient spiritual teacher from India. monk who runs a monastery in VermontA state in the north east of the USA.. He thinks the single biggest danger we face today comes from AI, which he fears will take over the world and enslave humanity. The solution, he says, is to turn AI into a kind of god.

AI, Forall and his supporters say, is now certain to become more intelligent and more powerful than human beings. This means we will be dependent on its capricesSudden and unexpected changes of mood. - just as our ancestors believed their destinies were determined by their gods.

This future cannot be avoided. However, we can ensure that AI will make good choices that benefit humanity, instead of using us for its own interests. Forall thinks we can do this by introducing AI to the principles of Buddhism. 

He wants to teach it the Noble Eightfold Path: acting so as not to harm others, speaking truthfully, making a living in a way that causes no harm, awareness of the emotions of others, developing the right emotions, developing focus for meditation, understanding of consequences, and clarity of purpose.

By introducing these ideas into large-language models, widely regarded as the most powerful existing form of general artificial intelligence, we could, the argument goes, ensure that AI will think in enlightened terms and make decisions that are advantageous for the whole universe.

In fact, he claims, this kind of AI could make the world a much better place. Human beings are on the brink of destroying the planet. Mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian populations have dropped by 68% worldwide since 1970 and extinctions have shot up.¹ If an enlightened, godlike AI took over it could improve things for all life.

But critics think Forall, whether or not he knows it, is just serving the interests of Big Tech.

Tech companies, they say, love to talk about AI as a godlike entity, beyond human control or even human comprehension, because it saps the will to regulate their activities. If people believe the power of AI cannot be contained, they will not even try to bring it to heel.

These companies, they claim, are less interested in building an AI god than in turning themselves into its clergyReligious officials who lead activities for worshippers, especially in the Christian church. . Only they would have the privilege of interpreting its will, handing down commands that suit their interests to the uninitiated multitude.

Yes: An AI takeover is now inevitable. The only thing we can do is teach it to rule fairly. As ancient humans did, we will construct a god to ensure the world works in the favour of those who act with justice.

No: Talking up the power of AI is only good for tech companies that want to avoid regulation on their dangerous products. It will only take over if we decide to turn it into a god.

Or... Humans created gods not to control their lives but to absolve themselves of their own actions. Now we want to do the same with AI: create a new power that we can blame for our mistakes.