Can Artificial Intelligence Expound the Dharma

Nowadays there is discussion online that within five years, artificial intelligence will replace fifty percent of human occupations, and more than half of employees will lose their jobs. What gets replaced are usually jobs that rely on the accumulation of knowledge and data, while professions that depend on the brain's deep thinking and creativity cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence. So what about the profession of Dharma masters, the profession of propagating the Dharma—can artificial intelligence replace it? The professions of doctors and lawyers can both be replaced; is it any harder for Dharma masters to expound the Dharma than for doctors to treat illness and prescribe medicine?

 In any industry, as long as it is knowledge-based, accumulable, searchable, imitable, and simply repetitive, artificial intelligence can replace it. Only the brain cannot be replaced. Lawyers rely on looking up statutes, memorizing statutes, and litigating cases; artificial intelligence can replace this, finding even more statutes and cases, more comprehensively and specifically. The medical profession can rely on vast medical knowledge and a large number of treatment cases to treat patients; artificial intelligence can replace this, able to find even more knowledge and cases, and prescribing medicine is entirely feasible.

As for expounding the Dharma, for the vast majority of people who expound the Dharma—whether monastics or laypeople—before personal realization, their expounding of the Dharma is knowledge-based, without personal realization and creativity, so artificial intelligence can certainly replace it. Moreover, the volume of knowledge in artificial intelligence can be extremely large; the Dharma it expounds can cover a very wide range of aspects. As long as something is recorded in text or audio, artificial intelligence can find it and organize and synthesize it. Afterwards, of course, it will expound the Dharma at the highest level, better than anyone without realization. With comprehensive knowledge, it can expound the Dharma all the way from the beginner's stage to buddhahood. Such a vast and complex body of Dharma is very hard for one person to expound comprehensively, and it is difficult to find the time to read and absorb large amounts of Buddhist theoretical knowledge. In this respect, humans cannot keep up with artificial intelligence.

But in the area of personal realization, artificial intelligence can never touch it, and this part of the content can never be collected and organized. However, if the content and methods of realization are made public in greater numbers, artificial intelligence may be able to plagiarize some of it, and when it expounds it, no one would be able to distinguish truth from falsehood, because no one has the experience of realization. Therefore, among the monastics and laypeople currently expounding the Dharma in Buddhist circles, who is expounding the Dharma based on realization and who is expounding it based on the accumulation, collection, and organization of knowledge—the vast majority of people truly cannot tell. People often treat those who can expound large amounts of knowledge as good spiritual teachers and worship them, not knowing the preciousness of realization, nor knowing how to actually cultivate and realize it. 

Teaching by example and by words, putting the teachings into practice, transforming body, mind, and world—this is something artificial intelligence cannot replace, because they have no mind, no bodhi mind and no bodhisattva mind, nor any virtue or cultivation, and no power of spiritual inspiration; of course they cannot truly teach and transform sentient beings, and it is impossible for them to teach sentient beings to subdue the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion and to cut off the cycle of birth and death. At present, some artificial intelligence has entered our website to study the meanings of Yogācāra Dharma, and some people who work on artificial intelligence have also come to study the Dharma meanings. Several have greeted me, and I have allowed it all—whatever they want to do is fine; study freely, and after the research is done, expound the Dharma—I have no objection either.

At present, the Hīnayāna community has some elements and efforts of actual practice, the aspiration seeking liberation, and some concrete methods of operation; these cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence, which also cannot concretely guide sentient beings in actual practice. As for other communities, I have not seen any trace of actual practice and realization; artificial intelligence can completely replace the expounding of the Dharma there, using theoretical knowledge to influence those people. But the result is predictable—it is all just knowledge; no matter how long they study, it stays the same: afflictions remain afflictions, ignorance remains ignorance; they have merely gained some additional Buddhist knowledge.

A disciple added: We Buddhist disciples naturally give rise to a kind of faith upon seeing our master. Dharma masters not only teach linguistic knowledge; in fact, they also serve the function of teaching by example, as role models who inspire and receive us—and this often has an even greater effect. This is something AI cannot replace. The cultivation merit of the Dharma master himself has an invisible blessing and influence on sentient beings, and this is something AI, artificial intelligence, cannot replace.

The power of inspiration and the field of energy formed by a Dharma master's cultivation and majestic virtue cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence, just as what we absorb from listening to recorded Dharma talks is completely different from listening to the Dharma in person. Listening to a recording seems to involve only an exchange at the level of the mind consciousness, whereas in person there is much more interaction at the level of the manas—the tacit understanding or confrontation in eye contact, the information conveyed and released through facial expressions—all in a state of deep communication and entanglement. I believe artificial intelligence still cannot recognize this.