Papal Encyclical on AI From a Buddhist Monk’s Perspective
3 points by danzacjones
3 points by danzacjones
I really could not care less who or what you worship. If you do evil, you are evil.
People of every religion can be evil. Christians showed it in satanic papal edicts like Nicholas V's "murder everyone" edict, not to mention more modern examples like the Holocaust. Buddhists monks embodied great evil in Myanmar, showing themselves to be no less vile than the worst of us as they spread hate and death to those unfortunate enough to be different. Israel, aggrieved by October 7, has responded with approximately a level of moral clarity commensurate with taking a machine gun into a school and opening fire indiscriminately.
The magnitude of these crimes is not lessened by past religious persecution of any people, not is strength of faith the smallest defense. We all must be judged by what we do -- by how the world is different because we are in it
Israel, aggrieved by October 7, has responded with approximately a level of moral clarity commensurate with taking a machine gun into a school and opening fire indiscriminately.
Is that so? Do you consider a war with a (plainclothes-)combatant to noncombatant fatality rate of 1:1.5 - 1:2 indiscriminate? Or maybe the evacuations, the warning phone calls and leaflets, the aid delivery facilitation, the running of a vaccination campaign in the middle of a warzone, these are all too low a standard for you?
The complexities of fighting an army of tens of thousands of deeply embedded irregulars, holding hostages in tunnels longer than the London underground and shooting thousands of rockets at civilian population centers, are not as cleanly reducible to an asinine analogy to a school shooting as you'd like. If the only thing you consider discriminate or moral in a battleground deliberately constructed like that is close-quarters door-to-door fighting with the commensurate troop attrition rate, I would consider that deeply immoral to the troops and their families, and would argue that no army with the means to act otherwise would do that.
So I said every religion can do be a force for evil and you say "not mine".
At least one official of Israel has called Palestinians subhuman and suggested that the purpose of Israel should be to wipe them out. Those comments were reported in the US and immediately rebuked by the government of Israel, yes! But were they not made with religious fervor? I surely do not mean to lump all in with one either, but I ask: were the words of hate not felt truly by the person who spoke them?
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the sense that the reason a comment like that received an official rebuke is because we here in the US are the only ones with the absolute power to force such a thing out of Israel. That doesn't make me feel better, only worse.
Finally I would also like confirmation that a child throwing a stone at an IDF soldier is not a death sentence, because word on the street is the policy is to murder children for this "crime". Just checked the news to see if it's still happening and YEP IT SURE IS. It's just not news anymore.
This was a fascinating read and (after the author shone the spotlight upon it) find it baffling to see the Pope use the Nehemiah story. We can (and perhaps should) assume good intent and think he was simply viewing the story through a different lens, but the optics aren't great. Especially considering the whole Anthropic stuff. Leo seems like a well-learned and modern man, I wish he would have doubled down harder on cautioning against AI.
If there's one thing I would have loved to see in this post is the author elaborating more on the Buddhist perspective. Not that their opinion isn't obvious and there's a couple mentions of relevant terms, but I was hoping to eventually see a section dedicated purely to quoting the Dharma against AI.
Even with just a very surface level and lay knowledge about the religion, it's not difficult to draw a parallel between AI endlessly regurgitating and recombining data and the concept of Samsara.
Now, I have read some thousands of articles, posts, and papers in this field over the past decade or so. I have not studied the demographics, but it seems to me that the field of AI criticism is disproportionately populated by women, people of color, trans folk, and others whose identities make them a target of ancient bigotries. Conversely, the AI industry is dominated by wealthy men.
I have seen it in many places, so this is not aimed at the author specifically and I'm not looking to dispute their points afterwards (that AI has negative biases towards minorities and women), but I don't really like this sort of comparison.
It seems to (unintentionally) imply a sort of collective "guilt by being a white guy" judgement, just because the tech is pushed by terrible people who also happen to be white guys. Even though it's not their white guy-ness that's the inherent problem, but the fact that you more or less have to be a terrible person to accumulate such wealth.
I know a lot of heterosexual white guys, who are regardless just as horrified by the slop onslaught and some who have even been affected by it by losing their jobs or at the very least their job security. I happen to also know some women and queer folk who are head over heels about AI and use them to an extent I find baffling.
Read this if you want to hear that Buddhism (denomination unspecified) is better than Catholicism.
It's mostly a rant filled with grievances about the Catholic church, with enough zeitgeisty AI catch phrases thrown in to get attention (and readers).
When contrasting "Our practice is to let go and move on" with the rest of the text, that "mission statement" seems more aspirational than anything for the author, so I'm not sure Buddhism deserves to be connected to this post…
[edit to add: the author was evicted by his order years ago and now promotes some "pre-sectarian Buddhism". I suppose "Buddhism" already decided.]
the author was evicted by his order years ago and now promotes some "pre-sectarian Buddhism". I suppose "Buddhism" already decided
Are you referring to the expulsion of Ajahn Brahm’s lineage from the Thai Forest tradition because they resumed bhikkhuni ordination (allow women to become monastics)?