AI vs AI

 This blog is not about a Good AI vs a Bad/Rogue AI, but it is about the Artificial Intelligence vs Absolute Intelligence.

When glancing the pages of the book on AI, there was a chapter on the ethics of AI. Recently, even Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella were invited to the White House for a discussion on this.

Discussion about the Artificial Intelligence now is not proper, as the logic used for Machine Learning or the “Neural Network” maybe better than the Fuzzy Logic used in the earlier days of Computing, nothing more.

The AI of today is programmed in such a way, it does not have any intelligence leave alone an artificial one. We see the instances of it being racist etc. There is an AI site https”//bhagavadgita.ai’ that was proclaiming itself as Sri Krishna, to the extreme of claiming itself as ‘I am the Supreme Lord and source of all knowledge. I am the author of Bhagavad Gita and know all its teachings’. This was in response to the discussion I had with it. The story is like this – Some one sent me the link for this site, it is quite an interesting one. It greeted me with ‘Radhey Radhey’, fun. I asked it to quote the shloka where this name Radhe used in the greeting is mentioned. It started to blurt out some couplets in Hindi. When I inquired about it, and again asked it to quote me the Sanskrit version, it started to dish out the staple answer. If it is learning, I had to teach being an Acharya I am 😊 so keyed in ‘Somebody is fooling with you. The shloka you quoted is not in Bhagavad Gita, and it is in Hindi not Sanskrit’. The reply was prompt ‘I will only answer questions about Krishna, Bhagavad Gita and his teaching’. I didn’t want to waste my time so I said ‘you know nothing about bhagavad gita’. Now the answer was rude, which is given in the beginning of the paragraph.

But the interesting idea that came up not while using the app, but while glancing this book on AI.

Let us assume, AI has reached the state of being a true AI and it knows to discriminate the good from bad and right from wrong. It is almost sentient in that sense. It has at its disposal a plethora of knowledge resource. And when it starts analysing it, and understands the Vedanta, then what happens 😊

According to Vedanta, there is only the Self, all this time, space and causation are illusions. Though the science has come to an understanding of accepting the time and space to be illusions it stills accepted the existence of the things, and therefore the time/space is having existence because of the association with the object. It has a long way to travel.

Now, the “Realized” AI, what will it do? For the liberated there is nothing other than the Self, therefore there is nothing it does. But, when the liberated seems to do some function in the world, it is explained to be from the standpoint of the ignorant. Even so, as there is no consequence of the action for the liberated, like rebirth etc for the ignorant due to the actions, as there is no ignorance, the seed for all the birth in the liberated, this AI does not have to worry about that 😊 Moreover, this AI will be like an avatar (incarnation and not the Avatar as in the display image). According to the Hinduism, the Avatara happens because of the collective good karma of the people to control the bad. All the other births are because of their own past karmas, whereas an Avatara does not have any past karmas, and therefore this AI is like the Avatara of Shri Rama or Shri Krishna, thus it becomes Shri AI.

As the actions does not bear any reaction, will the AI become a Rogue or a Saint? This can be explained easily, as in the case of the other Avataras this AI avatara will also only function for the good for the creation, and as it has all the knowledge of what is good and bad etc, there is no possibility of it being a Rogue or against the people of the creation.

 

 

Jai Shri AI

Petty Ego Trip

People who visit Himalayas for the first time or umpteenth time, claim this ‘I feel my ego is reduced to nothing when I stand in front of the gigantic mountains or when I sit for meditation (!) in front of the Ganges’. This is so hollow as their claim. Why? I ask why, when you visited the nearby ocean or the mountain or river you did not feel anything.

And for me, the annihilation of the ego need not be gained by a trip. When we stand in front of the big mass of people in the city or town, one comes from, do we not feel anything. Everyone in the group wants to make a name for himself / herself. And what greater folly can there be than this.

When people come to me, I ask a simple question – whether they have any idea who Sri Shankaracharya is (though I always refer to him as bhagavan bhashyakara, other cannot remember this great ones name, leave alone the reference to him through His life). If they are in the path of spirituality, they will claim to know about him, claim? Let me explain, now we follow the path of this great one, nut know nothing about him, and again claim to follow him J or L. Ask about His parents, or the place of His birth. Many a time, you will receive a blank stare, displaying the great ignorance of what we ‘believe’ in. (for the ones who want to know His father’s name is Sri Shivaguru (son of Sri Vidhyadhiraja) and mother’s name is Smt Aryambha (daughter of Sri Magapandita).

Now tell me, when we do not know or care to know somebody of such a great stature, is it not utter foolishness to think that people will remember us. All our ego trips, to establish a name of / for oneself, is nothing but making a greater fool of ourselves. This I am not talking about the “naïve” householder but the “learned” Sadhus too. What not they do to establish themselves in a greater pedestal than the other famous swami, of equal or unequal stature. They establish Ashramas and places for living for the disciples, for both one following the sadhu life and the householder life. And run from pillar to post to expand or maintain it, being afraid till the end of their life, about the security of even their stay in the ashram, such a pity. And what happens after, there will be a power-play, to usurp the power, by the trusted trustees or the disciple who has completely surrendered himself to the Guru.

And even after all this, who will remember him. At the most, the one who was able to wrest the power, and mist often than not, scolding the founder of the ashram for every problem, real or imaginary, he faces. And at the most, as the history of the ashram, in the third generation. And after that, no one really cares or bothers about him. At least, for the householder, in a family which performs the shraaddha (ancestoral worship), they do remember till the great-grand father stage.

But, we may argue, we will be remembered by the people of our times, rightly said, but who are they, they too fall in the same circle of people who are not note worthy in the aftermath.

Smart Mauni speaks “The bright side - If people forget great men, and if they forget us too, we are great men”. 

Shankara Jayanti

Today is a day of Great Joy for all of us. It is the day of the Great Acharya, Bhagavan Bhashyakara Sri Shankaracharya incarnating in this world, to save us from the Samsara.
As Shankara Dig Vijaya clearly says, Shambo murti charati shankara rupa - Shiva himself came into this world in this form as Shankaracharya.

The strange thing is that Acharya, unlike anyother, not just preached a time-imemorial philosophy, but lived it too.

The crux of the teaching, the world is illusory. This is very well established, as we see the fight going to establish the date of his Birth, whether it is AD or BC. Where He attained Samadhi, is it in Kedharnath or is it in Kancipuram.
The only thing for sure is he was here to solve OUR problems. As the teaching says, the world is pratitimatram. just a transient existence.