Can Artificial Intelligence Teach 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 teachers, the profession of propagating the Dharma—can artificial intelligence replace it? Even the professions of doctors and lawyers can be replaced; could teaching the Dharma by Dharma masters be more difficult than doctors treating illnesses and prescribing medicine?

 No matter what industry it is, as long as it is knowledge-based, accumulable, searchable, imitable, and simple and 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, searching out even more statutes and cases, more comprehensively and specifically. The medical profession relies 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 possible.

As for teaching the Dharma, the vast majority of people who teach the Dharma—whether monastics or laypeople—before attaining personal realization, teach the Dharma in a knowledge-based way, without personal realization and creativity. Artificial intelligence can certainly replace this, and the amount of knowledge artificial intelligence holds can be enormous. The Dharma it teaches can cover extremely broad aspects; as long as something is recorded in text or audio, artificial intelligence can find it and organize and synthesize it. Afterwards, it will certainly teach the best, better than anyone without realization—comprehensive in knowledge, able to teach the Dharma from the beginner's stage all the way to buddhahood. Such a vast and complex body of Dharma is very difficult for one person to teach comprehensively, and it is hard 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 content and methods of realization are made public in large quantities, artificial intelligence might perhaps plagiarize some of it, and when it teaches it, no one would be able to distinguish truth from falsehood, because none of them have realization experience. Therefore, among the monastics and laypeople currently teaching the Dharma in Buddhist circles, who teaches based on realization and who teaches based on accumulated, collected, and organized knowledge—the vast majority of people truly cannot distinguish. People often regard those who can lecture on large amounts of knowledge as good teachers (kalyāṇamitra) and worship them, not knowing the preciousness of realization, nor knowing how to actually cultivate and realize.

Teaching by example and by word, practicing personally, transforming body, mind, and world—this is something artificial intelligence cannot replace, because they have no mind, no bodhi mind or bodhisattva mind, nor virtue and cultivation, nor the power to inspire and embrace others. Of course they cannot truly teach and transform sentient beings, and cannot possibly 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 Yogācāra doctrine, and some people working in artificial intelligence have also come to study the Dharma. Several have greeted me, and I have allowed them all—whatever they want to do is fine, study freely; after they finish their research and then teach the Dharma, I have no objection either.

At present, the Hīnayāna community has some elements and practices of actual cultivation, the aspiration seeking liberation, and some concrete methods—these are things artificial intelligence cannot replace, and it cannot concretely guide sentient beings in actual practice. As for other communities, I have not seen any trace of actual cultivation and realization; artificial intelligence can completely replace the teaching 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 remains the same: afflictions are still afflictions, ignorance is still ignorance, only with a bit more Buddhist knowledge added.

A disciple added: We Buddhist disciples naturally generate a kind of faith upon seeing our master. Dharma teachers not only teach verbal knowledge; they actually also serve as role models teaching by example and embracing students, which often has an even greater effect. This is something AI cannot replace. The cultivation merit of a Dharma teacher himself has an invisible blessing and influence on sentient beings, and this is something AI, artificial intelligence, cannot substitute.

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 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.