AI Buddha enters the chat just as people are facing AI induced anxiety

March 28, 2023 0 Comments

In recent months, AI chatbots like Chat-GPT and Bard, AI text-to-image tools such as Stable Diffusion and DALL·E, and AI productivity tools like Notion AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as the AI programmer GitHub Copilot, have dazzled the world with their impressive capabilities. Many have hailed these advancements in AI-Generated Content (AIGC) as a sign that we are inching closer to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and even artificial super intelligence (ASI).

Lately, a mechanical Buddha dubbed “Hotoke AI” has emerged in the race towards advanced AI technologies. This AI system has rapidly gained popularity among netizens and has already solved more than 240,000 concerns since its inception.

Hotoke, or 仏 in Japanese, translates to “buddha”. The AI chatbot is a Buddha simulator equipped with Chat-GPT abilities, which can use “buddha’s wisdom” to “comfort your heart,” and even bestow hashtags that are tailored to the specific issues raised by its users.

Developed by Japanese entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri, who was ordained in Jodo Shinshu, Hotoke AI has been solving concerns for youths in China. A post introducing Hotoke AI on Xiaohongshu, a popular lifestyle social platform, received over 4,300 likes. People have been turning to this mechanical Buddha for advice on a range of issues, including how to make cheesecakes, recovering from eating disorders, career goals, overcoming writer’s block, and even coping with haunting sins.

But little does Hotoke AI know, it is AI technology like itself that is fundamentally inducing anxiety in humans.

Even though AI-generated content is still limited to specific tasks and lacks the flexibility and adaptability of human intelligence, the hype surrounding AI has created an overwhelming sense of expectation. For instance, while AI-generated text can be impressive in terms of coherence and structure, it often lacks creativity, originality, and sometimes accuracy, underscoring the limitations of current AI technologies.

A recent research paper published by a group of scientists at Microsoft Research reveals that GPT-4’s performance in a wide range of tasks spanning “mathematics, coding, vision, medicine, law, and psychology, among others,” is “strikingly close to human-level performance.” This finding has led scientists to believe GPT-4 “could reasonably be viewed as an early (albeit incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system.”

The thought of AI pacing at a faster speed than our wildest imaginations is haunting. As users and developers on Reddit and Twitter pointed out, worries abound regarding the potential impact of AI on knowledge workers, politics, education, and society as a whole.

The dystopian future depicted in “The Three-Body Problem,” a science fiction novel and Hugo Award winner, illustrates this anxiety. The protagonist, Luo Ji, wakes up from hibernation to a world of kaleidoscopic tech gadgets, where everything is digital, automated, and “advanced” to the point of being reminiscent of an episode of Black Mirror on steroids. The novel depicts a society confident in its ability to fight extraterrestrial threats, having built thousands of spaceships, each larger and faster than the enemy’s.

However, it later turns out that the Earth was deadly wrong, as the Trisolaran probe effortlessly destroys thousands of Earth spaceships, revealing that size and speed alone are not enough to guarantee victory. Humans have forgotten that particle physics and supercomputing advancements have been stunted due to Trisolaran intervention. Humans are trapped in an illusion of scientific and technological development created by various applications developed using known technologies.

Loosely, the enchanting yet elusive prosperity of technology mirrors what is happening today: the AI hype. Many are caught up in a techno-utopian fever dream where the possibilities seem endless. Today’s smartphones allow us to accomplish anything at our fingertips, from ordering groceries to controlling vacuum robots, but we remain uncertain about how close we are to achieving the futuristic world depicted in science-fiction movies.

Sure, we’ve got some pretty cool AIs that can code, paint, write essays, and chat. But it is the “robot uprising” level of dilemma that people suspect will be lurking in the future.

But what does Hotoke AI think about the implications of AI for society? When asked, Hotoke AI responded from a Buddhist perspective, stating that “impermanence is a fundamental truth of the universe. Everything is in a constant state of change, and nothing lasts forever. While this can be a source of discomfort, it can present an opportunity for growth and transformation.”

Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash

Leave a Reply