Compassionate AI and Selfless Robots: A Buddhist Approach

摘要

For the last decade, Buddhists have engaged in dialog with the cognitive sciences about the nature of consciousness and the self (Wallace 2009). This dialog has made clear that Buddhist psychology and meditation provide insights into the emergence of selves, desires, and consciousness. Buddhism, in turn, is being pressed to accept that its canonical traditions and categories, developed to pursue the alleviation of suffering rather than scientific modeling, can learn from cognitive science (Austin 2009; Hanson 2009). The Dalai Lama has famously said, for instance, that Buddhism must adapt itself to the findings of science, and not the other way around (Gyatso 2005). The cognitive science emerging from this dialog with Buddhism can now also make some suggestions for those attempting to create selfaware, self-directed artificial intelligence (AI). Unlike faiths that posit some uniqueness to the human form that would make artificial minds impossible, Buddhists are more open to the possibility of consciousness instantiated in machines. When the Dalai Lama was asked if robots could ever become sentient beings, for instance, he answered that “if the physical basis of the computer acquires the potential or the ability to serve as a basis for a continuum of consciousness . . . a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer” (Hayward and Varela 1992, 152). His Holiness was choosing his words carefully. Buddhist psychology is very specific about the “physical basis for a continuum of consciousness.” In this chapter, I will describe the Buddhist etiology of the emergence of selves and how it relates to efforts to create self-directed cognition in machines. I will address some of the ethical questions about the creation of machine minds that are suggested by Buddhist cosmology. Then, I will conclude with some thoughts about the ways that machine minds might be designed to maximize their self-directed evolution toward greater compassion and wisdom.