synchronicity leading to Buddhism and robots

27 Jul 2020

I have been reading about Buddhist philosophy since high school. I need to partly thank Buddhism for escaping the last dark period of my life. But I’m bad at following traditions, and I often ‘‘forget about Buddhism’’ even though I’m convinced many of the core principles of Buddhism have sink in forever in me.

I’ve been following the Zen Studies Podcast since 2018 but it was not until recently that I started again to listen to Domyo Burk’s teachings. Since I have been overthinking a lot recently (namely because I’m reading so many interesting things and meeting such new interesting people), I felt like I needed to find refuge somewhere or else I couldn’t sustain my lifestyle.

So yeah, here I am going back to my buddhist practice, and I’m working hard on not giving up all my other intellectual pursuits just to focus on it because it is one big relief to refocus on medidation and zen in general. So, a way my brain tricked myself into not doing that is incorporating buddhism in my science-fiction writing project. We can read while my main protagonist are at the Crypt, the base of a queer secret society planning to overcome the new world dictatorship :

AImarita introduced Utena as one of the main Priestix of the Crypt. They shook hand and Utena quickly left.
‘’I didn’t know you had religion here’’, commented Sasha afterward.
‘’Well the Crypt was founded by Buddhist witches, but the cult is not obligatory.’’
Sasha knew that Buddhism was one of the religion of the past but didn’t know any of them survived.
‘’There is dharma talks every day at eleven if you are curious to see how it looks. Nnedi always go, maybe you could accompany her.’’

And since my universe is one of science-fiction where androids, cyborgs and humans coexist, I started to research about how Buddhism perceive robots and I fell upon this marvelous text. And now I have no choice but to incorporate more Buddhism in my utopian studies. As I’m also reading for the first time right now Battle Angel Alita, I need to say that his week I especially love Japan.

Once again I have no intention of summarizing the text in its entirety (I recommend everybody interested in the subject to read it themselves), but here’s some interesting points I want to go back to later:

• To not model robots on the ‘‘flawed human’’ but on the Buddhist practitioner who’s compassion driven, how does that translate in real code? I gotta see what the Mukta Institude is doing. And also this text on Ubuntu (not the OS) as a framework for AI can help me figure this out.
• The question of robot design, namely sex dolls, in regard of this quote by Kawaguchi:

“To a certain degree, we feel empathy and attraction to a humanlike object; but one tiny design change, and suddenly we are full of fear and revulsion.”

• and maybe a question tiré par les cheveux but could a certain ‘‘body diversity’’ in robots (because the quote suggests the design of robots looking like robots and not trying to replicate human form) help humans to accept the body diversity of their own specie (hello fatphobia)?
• The general potential of the Buddhist philosophy of putting everything as equals (men, women, animals, plants, robots, objects…) in the articulation of anarchist (revolutinnary?) narratives

EDIT 24/08/2020 : It’s funny how everything is cyclical sometimes. I was re-reading some old blog posts, and came accross one on Buddhism I wrote in 2018. I thought this part could be a nice add-on to this recent post.

Dans un autre ordre d’idée, je suis tombée dernièrement sur cet article qui tente d’expliquer pourquoi le monde occidental craint l’intelligence artificielle tandis que celui oriental semble inconditionnellement enthousiaste à ce sujet. L’auteur, le Japonais Joi Ito, de ce dernier fait reposer son explication sur la différence intrinsèque entre les religions orientales et celles occidentales. En effet, d’un côté, les religions chrétiennes mettent l’espèce humaine sur un pied d’éstade – le dissociant du reste du monde – et disent que croire en autres choses que Dieu est blasphématoire. Il n’est pas surprenant que l’apparition d’une intelligence supérieure puisse les inquiéter. Étonnamment, certaines sectes chrétiennes s’adaptent à cette réalité en intégrant le transhumanisme dans leur croyance, notamment les mormons (à ce sujet, je vous suggère ce balado). De l’autre côté, le shintoïsme et le bouddhisme prônent que tout a une vie, tout est égal et interrelié : la plante, l’animal et l’humain ont une valeur similaire. Ainsi, pour eux, un robot est facile à appréhender comme égal plutôt qu’inquiétant, voire bienvenu. Évidemment, d’autres facteurs, comme la culture populaire, influencent nos perceptions sur l’intelligence artificielle, mais il est intéressant de voir comment la religion peut expliquer partiellement cela.