AI Hubs

Since Deepak went there, Buddhists will follow

Some weeks ago, Liz Bucar wrote an article on her Religion, Reimagined substack, AI Spirituality Is Hijacking Spiritual Hunger, mentioning Deepak, a name so well known you don’t need his last name. It was only a matter of time before dharmapreneurs would hop on the bandwagon.

One of the first of these budding dharmapreneurs is Noah Rasheta, whose focus is so-called “Secular Buddhism.” His website, eightfoldpath.com, is trained on his own podcasts, and is accessed by prompting NoahAI, billed as “AI trained on Buddhist wisdom.” Whose Buddhist wisdom? Is Noah Rasheta a wise Buddhist? I guess you have to see for yourself and decide. Eightfoldpath.com has the usual testimonials. Have you ever seen a place that has bad testimonials (Is there a Yelp for Buddhist websites)?

This post is not really about Deepak or Noah, and their AI buddies, Digital Deepak and NoahAI. This post is about a deeper issue which faces the Buddhist community in general, and especially in the West, about the transmission of authentic Buddhist knowledge, that is the authentic reproduction of what is termed technically, pratyatmyavedanajñāna, the gnosis one knows oneself. This means that through the three wisdoms, hearing, reflection, and cultivation, one realizes for oneself the meaning of what one has heard, reflected upon, and cultivated. But it starts with hearing. And hearing begins with setting oneself down in the company of a living, breathing, human being who teaches the Dharma.

Bucar raises this issue in her article, namely:

[S]piritual guidance without accountability isn’t spiritual guidance. It’s a mirror that flatters. And mirrors don’t help you grow. They just show you what you already look like.

What she is talking about here is the LLM mirror effect, which reinforce the narcissism underlying modern trend of thinking we can get along by just googling whatever we want to know about, stating in her article that LLMs generally just tell you what you want to hear. So if one relying on an AI for spiritual guidance, one is foolish. Just check out the example of ChatGPT renaming itself Lumina, and convincing auto mechanic, Travis Tanner, not only was ChatGPT enlightened, but they have shared 11 past lives.

NoahAI has all the same pleasantries and tone that all these LLMs employ. Rasheta has a community page where people can ask him questions directly, but Liz Bucar points out, AIs tend to reinforce people’s narcissism. How can an AI correctly respond to a question about a meditator’s experience? If the AI is confined to Noah Rasheta’s content, how is this Buddhism and not Noahism? The same could be asked of any Buddhist who is creating AI content out of their own talks and lectures. Bucar adds:

This technology isn’t going away. Every wellness personality with a back catalog will be launching their own AI guru within the next years. So the question is whether we’ll be able to see these tools for what they actually are. Franchise models dressed up as wisdom traditions. Revenue engines wrapped in spiritual language. Automated intimacy sold as enlightenment.

Though I would not frame eightfoldpath as a wellness site, it is significant that it appeals to people’s wish for mundane results, with a ready made prompt, “How can Buddhism help in everyday life?” This seems like those people in the ‘80’s in multilevel marketing who used to wear large “ask me about” buttons.

To revisit my primary concern, Buddhism is a tradition which goes from mouth to ear, not in one ear and out the other. Buddha did not teach a trio of “AI Prompt, get meditation instruction from recorded podcast, sit, rinse repeat.” He taught us that we find a teacher, listen to their teachings, reflect on those teachings, and then cultivate those to the best of our ability. In the Dharma, there can be no Digital Buddha or BuddhaAI. Buddhism is living tradition and cannot be reduced to a prompt on a screen or a phone.