AI Can Only Replace the Simple Functions of the Mind Consciousness

It is said that some people have lost their jobs because their work was replaced by AI, and some graduates find their education useless upon graduation. Under such circumstances, how can one avoid being replaced by AI and stay ahead of it?

The disciple said: What AI replaces are tasks of statistical aggregation and analysis, which it performs with extremely high efficiency. However, when it comes to complex interpersonal communication, human beings are still needed to come forward and communicate. Likewise, matters such as cultivating practice and seeking realization must be done by oneself.

Assessment: AI is entirely a function of the mind consciousness; it cannot invent or create, cannot innovate. It can only follow behind creative people, copying and pasting, organizing and summarizing, then indulging in sentimental speculation and intellectual interpretation, never stepping outside the framework of its programming. It cannot surpass the wisdom of creative people; what does not exist in the world, it cannot produce. Therefore, if humanity wishes not to be replaced by AI, the only way is to innovate and develop one's own potential.

As for development and innovation, the mind consciousness absolutely cannot accomplish this. Even if the mind consciousness can daydream boundlessly, it cannot create the things it imagines. The function of innovation and creation belongs uniquely to the manas, with the six consciousnesses assisting. AI can copy, paste, and imitate written language, speech, and bodily movements; it can organize, summarize, classify, and arrange texts. But human thoughts and emotions cannot be copied and pasted by AI. Perhaps it can imitate them, but what it imitates is not the genuine thing. Thoughts and emotions come from the depths of the mind—the manas—which is extremely hidden and subtle. AI can only imitate coarse, superficial things; it is impossible for it to pass off the fake as real and completely replace humanity. Since the manas possesses thoughts, emotions, and moods, it must have various afflictive mental factors and wholesome mental factors, possessing all the mental factors that a conscious mind should have.

Of the four steps of the Buddha's teaching—hearing, contemplation, cultivation, and realization—AI can replace and even surpass humans in hearing and contemplation, but it can never have cultivation and realization. This is because hearing and contemplation are functions of the mind consciousness, which are relatively simple and can be copied, imitated, and substituted. But the capacity for cultivation and realization is something AI can never possess. A metal machine has no mind; without a mind, how could it cultivate practice, let alone realize anything? When Māra Pāpīyas first entered the Buddha's assembly, he heard a great deal of the Buddha's teachings; he could hear and contemplate, and could memorize, with abundant knowledge. But because his greed and desire were blazing, he had no mind for cultivation and realization. He was thus comparable to AI—perhaps even surpassing AI—but had no cultivation or realization. If Pāpīyas had cultivation and realization, he would not have schemed in every possible way to destroy the Buddha's teachings, nor would he have schemed in every possible way to obstruct sentient beings' practice, still less would he have been so attached to the various things of the desire realm, even to the point of committing great evil karma.