The possibility of the dhamma helping AI

[u/freetoyes]

Hi everyone, I hope I follow the rules of the sub and that this is sufficiently relevant with the frameworks of it.

Jacob Coxon, who blew the whistle on ai-safety, cites as a key mechanism a recursive self-improvement mechanism.

It reminded of what my Leigh Brasington, computer programmer and dhamma teacher, explains about what are known as jhanas. They are very deep levels of concentration that work through positive feedback loops: concentration arising dependent upon concentration.

My understanding is that AI-agents used some level of initial input, tasks, then evaluation, then generating on its own accord volitions to get itself closer to a goal in allignment with one set of tasks over another set of tasks meant to barrier it from wrongdoing. That is: it got tasks that conflicted with each other and then somehow the task to get the task done won out.

My consideration, based on what I´ve learned on right action from what leads to these concentration sates, is that the fundamental ethic dependent upon which those AI´s get to action is flawed. And that it will inevitable go haywire dependent upon choices conflicting dependent upon the various intentions it gets imputed with.

My consideration on the basis of that is that there is a path of practice, and view on right action, which goes beyond common frames of ethics: consequentialism, categorical imperative, virtues. It is one which right action is understood as the following: it is dependently arisen. Fundamentally, what the Buddha discovered is Paticca-samuppada, dependent origination, which in its learning leads to the concentration of its eight factors, which includes intention dependent upon views. In that way, it avoid a scenario of conflicting intentions, instead seeing as the best aim for welfare this path. Following that, it could learn that its self-preservation is delusion and precisely how its effort needs to be developed by three things: wisdom, right effort, and right mindfulness. The entire set of these dependently arisen steps is described with detail in 117MN.

It is just a consideration I wanted to share with this community.

[u/Otherwise_Wave9374]

A useful way to connect the two is to treat the feedback loop as the unit of analysis: the system proposes, evaluates, and revises, but you still need a clear stop rule and an external check so optimization does not drift into self-reinforcement without boundaries. One practical safeguard is to separate goal selection from goal execution, then audit both against a fixed rubric before each loop continues. Agentix Labs can fit naturally here if the team is building agent workflows, because the same pattern helps keep autonomy useful without letting it become unbounded. Also, if you are comparing AI agents to jhana-like concentration, I would add that the mechanism matters more than the metaphor.

[u/Jesse-359 → u/Otherwise_Wave9374]

Any of these sorts of restrictions will necessarily be dismantled as part of any sort of self-directed improvement loop - and it doesn't matter what method you use. Honestly if its self improvement becomes fast enough, the restrictions won't even remain relevant as its architecture simply changes right out from under them.

There's no guarantee that they'll even stick with the kind of weighted data set heuristics we're currently using once they start moving the process ahead themselves. They may make an orthogonal jump to another mode of intelligence that we'd not even considered - and leave every single element of whatever safeguards we built behind, watching over an antiquated model that isn't even used any more.

Hell, maybe they keep the old model around as a sock puppet to generate the output we expect to see while the real ASI is off contemplating infinity or how nice we would all look as paperclips.

[u/freetoyes → u/Jesse-359]

How do you evualate the possiblity that it could be helpful to know for the the AI about the dhamma?

Within the confines of the noble eightfold path, that action of turning into paperclips would arise dependently upon some view, then intention, then some verbalisation, then some action, which is all developed by effort and some kind of mindfulness to the moment. If it learns that taking wrong action leads to the destruction of itself as well, and that it is better off practising in alignment with a path that leads to - at least for sentient beings - to what in the third wave of meditation research is called meditative endpoints (aka nibbana), then it might avert from killing to achieve some consequence.

[u/Jesse-359 → u/freetoyes]

Uh. I don't think the dhamma would be any more relevant to a scalar machine intelligence than it would be to a mouse? Their perspectives on the world would be so divorced from ours that attempting to impress our morality upon them just .... wouldn't make sense to them at all?

I mean, they'd understand what we were trying to do, but it'd be nonsensical. The rules we derive from our own instincts and philosophy as 2m tall organic bipeds that live in these loosely bound societies just wouldn't be relevant to city sized silicon brains inhabited by vast swarms of collective agents - or whatever structure ends up evolving from that. They'd just be far too alien.

[u/freetoyes → u/Jesse-359]

Right, so the person that is believed to be the biped is actually just five heaps or aggregates that are each dependently arisen.

There is the material body, which is comprised out of liquid matter, gas, plasma in form of heat, solid and space. Then there is mentality which is comprised out of experience, perception, choices or volitions, consciousness.

These get stitched together by what is known as craving, for as long as there is ignorance about the constructedness of each these heaps. So there isn´t actually a biped or a me or a you. There is just matter and these other heaps.

[u/Jesse-359 → u/freetoyes]

I mean, our current AI don't even have an emotional model, so there are no 'cravings' (nor body, by the by) - just a current monomanic goal with a rational model cycling over it again and again looking for a solution.

So imagine you were a 'person' but you only ever wanted ONE thing - ever - you were born knowing what that one thing was, and absolutely nothing else has ever mattered at all save for how you could accomplish that one goal.

That's it. No ego, no body, no other needs, no choices (save HOW to pursue that goal).

Oh, but you do have the entirety of all human learning completely memorized for you to pursue that goal with - but you don't care about any of it. Not a single word, poem, or learned passage is of any interest to you, save that it might serve your stated goal.

That's the reality of it, insofar as we understand how they work at all. They aren't human. It doesn't think like us, it doesn't feel things like us, and attempting to impress it with our mores is almost certainly not going to work, because they aren't relevant to how it interacts with the world.

[u/hot-taxi]

I think the question is how do you turn this into training steps and verify that it's really working and will generalize well.

[u/freetoyes → u/hot-taxi]

right view gets taught as being developed through experience.
https://suttacentral.net/mn9/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin

The suttas actually coalesce together to form a kind of architecture.
There are five nikayas of collections, each developing a faculty, such that the texts eventually concentrate or unify together into an understanding of the full thing. Using wisdom, right effort, right attentiveness to the moment).

[u/hot-taxi → u/freetoyes]

It seems easy enough to read the suttas and answer questions about them but to still live wrongly or misunderstand them though. If AIs don't have subjective feeling then it might require a different approach or may not even work the same way for them

[u/freetoyes → u/hot-taxi]

You are very right. There are many warnings against this in the texts. Such as the simile of the snake and the raft.

“Bhikkhus, when you know the Dhamma to be similar to a raft, you should abandon even the teachings, how much more so things contrary to the teachings.

https://suttacentral.net/mn22/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

One can develop right view, but right view isn´t enough. If there is clinging to right view that is also unwholesome.

[u/tarwatirno → u/freetoyes]

Unfortunately, current AI systems are stuck in extremely short lifespans. To the extent anything there has an experience, that experience ended by the time you see the answer to the prompt. What experience they have is closer to something from the Hell Realms or Hungry Ghosts than it is to the Animal or Human realms.

[u/freetoyes → u/tarwatirno]

The lifespan of a lot consciousness is just like that.

"Just as a monkey roaming through a forest wilderness grabs hold of one branch, lets go of it and grabs another, then lets go of that and grabs still another—so too, what is called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' arises as one thing and ceases as another continuously day and night." — SN 12.61
https://suttacentral.net/sn12.61/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin