[Updated on 4 June '26 with additional paragraphs on mental agency.]
It is one year since my last post, in which I related how I made a comparison of human and machine intelligence on the basis of reflections on stillness. After pulling my paper from consideration for the JSRE special issue, I subsequently had a shorter article on this topic included in Issue 78 of De Numine, the magazine journal of the Alister Hardy Trust.
Since my last post my Academia profile has received dozens of invitations to submit a conference paper, all of them relating to AI. The headline themes include computer science, engineering, signal and image processing, wireless and mobile technologies, database management, big data, Internet of Things, and so on. Yet, at the same time, I’ve not received any invitations related to my most popular upload by far, which is on Buddhist ethics. This is an indication of the frenzied and scattered attention being given to AI, often at the expense of pretty much everything else.
Mainstream media is reporting increased existential fears, ranging from the immediate (job uncertainty) to long-term implications for humanity. This is concentrating attention on the distinct qualities of being human, but I find the response from academia tends to take a materialist perspective and gets bogged down in legalities. Much more on point is Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.
The Pope's letter dwells especially on the social aspects and the common good, naturally reflecting the concerns of an institution. Here I take a Buddhist perspective, focused more on the individual. Moving out of stillness, I wish again to highlight six characteristics of human agency:
• initiation
• exertion
• making effort
• steadfastness
• persistence
• endeavouring
This is sourced from the Attakārī Sutta: The Self-Doer, AN 6.38 (an English translation from the Pali on Access to Insight).
As an illustration, imagine entering the London Marathon. Fast forward to race day and the run itself.
• initiation: when the starter fires the gun, you respond and decide to start moving
• exertion: you drive forward and start moving your legs
• making effort: you accelerate up to your normal running speed and into your standard running posture
• steadfastness: you maintain a steady gait and pace, start to clock up the miles
• persistence: you tire and start to ache, but keep going
• endeavouring: you ‘hit the wall’, but take on energy fluids, rest a while and then keep going, determined to finish.
You complete the race and glow at the achievement; the sense of personal satisfaction is immense on top of the gladness in raising funds for your charity.
The example primarily concerns physical agency, though in the wider context of preparation and training also involves actions in speech and mind. These activities are permeated by the pervasive digital environment, involving many online interactions such as registration, making purchases, and seeking inspiration and advice in social media.
Getting ready for and participating in a marathon is usually highly motivated and focused, strengthening agency and increasing confidence in facing the challenges of life, but is this the case for other aspects of a typically busy lifestyle? When online or plugged in with digital devices, we need to be especially heedful of the mental aspects and be wary of being swept along.
- Are we making decisions ourselves?
- Are we attending to tasks promptly or putting things off?
- Are we thinking things through?
- Are we evaluating for the long-term as well as short-term?
- Are we prepared to put in the extra hours to solve problems?
- Are we ready for a power cut?
- Do we have a plan B?
- What have we really learnt?
- Are we able to stop and bring our minds to peace and stillness?
- Are we contented?
Or are we restless, increasingly handing over tasks to some other agent, generative AI, in the hope that it will solve our problems? With the nature of this technology being all-embracing, there is a potentially huge deleterious impact on cognitive functioning. It could impair human agency to such an extent that we come little more than drones.
Rather than blindly accepting the 'latest and greatest' digital promise, we should always ask: Do we really need it? Constructively, we can take each of the six characteristics listed in the Attakārī Sutta and simply ask of any proposed technology: Is this likely to enhance or undermine human agency? To sharpen the focus, ask these questions assuming that the technology is removed after a certain time. What are you left with?
I discuss this further in my short book, Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms, and paper, Cultivating sīla Online: the use of Cognitive Interventions in Systems Design.
