Self-inquiry and AI

Rise of Machines and Nature of Consciousness

First, a sweet, little poem about Lord Krishna:

In the land of Vrindavan,
Where the gopis dance and play,
Lord Krishna spends his days,
In endless joy and endless grace.

With his flute he charms the hearts,
Of all the gopis fair,
And with his sweet and gentle voice,
He fills the air.

His pastimes are a delight,
To all who see,
For in his playful, mischievous ways,
He sets the world free.

So let us celebrate the Lord,
And all his joyous deeds,
For in his love and in his light,
We find our every need.

Now, here is the thing about this lovely poem. It was generated by the AI chatbot ChatGPT in less than a second. Sharing this poem was a bit of a live Turing test experiment to exhibit ‘intelligent’ behavior that is indistinguishable from humans. And I am sure it likely passed. After I shared this tool with another friend, he is already generating reports, cover letters for resumes, getting SQL queries written using this tool. And he summarized his response to it by saying this is both awesome and scary!

All this not only points out that all activities of thought are mechanical, it also brings up existential questions of the nature of humans and machines.

Though we are known as human beings, the society constantly makes us into human doings. Doing is essential of course, but does not need to define us. And yet vast majority define ourselves by what we do. And among all doings, we have put ‘creative’ activities like poetry and art as the highest expression of being humans, across all cultures. And yet now we have a machine performing such activities instantaneously. If a conscious being is defined by the ability to have thoughts and feelings and express them through language or other forms, then machines are already conscious.

So it is worthwhile inquiring what then is truly a conscious being (which is another way to inquire who am I). Isn’t it as the word suggests to simply be conscious? That is, to abide as consciousness free of any content including thoughts, feelings, doings. Content of various kinds — whether gross actions or subtle thoughts and feelings — comes and goes as it always does each moment. It need not be stopped, but it need not define us either. The light of awareness in which the play of content takes place is ever shining. As long as we define ourselves by content, we will simply be tossed up and down every moment and also perhaps feel threatened by the rise of machines now. But it is indeed a blessing in disguise to see the space of content slowly being taken over by machines. If all doing is seen as mechanical, then perhaps doing finds its right place. And the light of being comes into clear focus.

By negating all identification with doing, what remains is the Awareness in which the doing and the negating takes place. This is the essence of self inquiry as pointed out by Ramana Maharshi. Seeing this truth transcends all knowing. As he put it concisely, to know it is to be it.