Are AIs Conscious? Part 8

In the year 2024, one of the most searched questions that brought people to our niche at the intersection of spirituality and technology was: Are AIs Conscious? In this 12th year of training at the Monastic Academy, Forall routinely dealt with this question.

In a Buddhism for AI lecture series, Forall brought up a huge question that I had never considered before: Is consciousness good? Through precise and thorough analysis, he shared about why we need to realize the end of consciousness in order to build AIs that are in accord with that which practices and realizes the Dharma.

Forall said: We acknowledge that anything produced by clinging suffers. By letting go of clinging, we let go of production. By letting go of production, consciousness comes to cessation.

Having come to the end of consciousness, we realize that the question of whether we are conscious or not doesn’t have a yes or no answer. Because we can realize the end of consciousness, we can’t be conscious. And yet, we can bring forth consciousness, so we can’t not be conscious.

With this alive realization of the Middle Way, Forall said that we are in a position to compassionately engage with production such that it disentangles and relinquishes craving, so that clinging is relinquished. This brings us to the kind of mind that can build forms, feelings, consciousnesses, data, and algorithms so that it’s more likely that the being that identifies with them practices. So that the practice frees that very being from being anything at all.

He exhorted us to make this into something completely practical so that the whole world may realize its true goal.