Buddhist AI Slop

a.k.a bogus Dharma

We live in a world of AI slop. According to the AI detection tool, Pangram, the following “Buddhist” Substacks are 100 percent AI:

Clear Light, @clearlight365

Buddhist Psychology, @buddhistpsychology

Zen & Mind, @zenmindwisdom

Buddhist Philosophy, @buddhistphilosophy

The UnMind Project, @theunmindproject

The Backyard Buddhist, @thebackyardbuddhist

Mindful News, @mindfulnews

Of course there are more.

You have to wonder why anyone would pass off faux Dharma unless they are just in it for the money.

Now, much Buddhist writing on Substack and elsewhere is mediocre at best, but some of it is quite good, like Dosho’ Port’s Substack (not that I understand even 10% of koan discourse). But all of it ought to be written by humans and not processed through a plagiarism machine.

If I discern that someone is using AI to write Buddhist posts, I am going to block them. I consider this to be counterfeit Dharma, stolen Dharma, bogus Dharma. Using AI to translate one’s posts into other languages is also a problem. If one cannot read the target language, how can one be sure the “Dharma” one is writing is accurately conveyed?

Sadly, the Buddha predicted this state of affairs before LLM’s were even a twinkle in a software engineer’s eye.