Volume 33, 2026
Artificial Intelligence as a Condition for Kamma: Utu-niyāma, Cetanā, and Moral Responsibility in Theravāda Abhidhamma
Indrajith P. Karunanayaka
Independent Researcher
Recent work in Buddhist ethics agrees that current artificial intelligence is not a moral agent because it lacks intention (cetanā). However, AI still shapes human moral choices. This article explores how an impersonal computational system operating through physical hardware influences human moral responsibility and intention using the Theravāda Abhidhamma. First, building on studies of how people respond to computers and AI chatbots, this article examines how AI chatbots imitate the signs of human speech in ways that support a specific form of perceptual distortion (saññā vipallāsa): users may respond to machine-generated text as if it carried a speaker’s intention, even when they intellectually know that no conscious mind stands behind it. This misframing can support unwise attention (ayoniso manasikāra) and affect moral decision-making. Second, this paper shows how AI algorithms act as a natural support condition (pakatūpanissaya paccaya). They shape our habits and choices over time in ways that Western behavioral theories do not fully capture. Finally, this article connects these ideas to Vinaya and jurisprudence. It uses the Vinaya concept of preparatory action (pubbapayoga) to argue that AI engineers hold a specific ethical responsibility for building systems that shape the future intentions of their users.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
The Ethics of AI and Robotics: A Buddhist Viewpoint. By Soraj Hongladarom. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020, 236 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-9729-6 (hardback), $100.00.
Reviewed by James J. Hughes
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
True Love for the Artificial? Toward the Possibility of Bodhisattva Relations with Machines
Thomas H. Doctor
Kathmandu University Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute
Given our increasing interaction with artificial intelligence and immersion in virtual reality, which epistemic and moral attitudes towards virtual beings might we think proper, relevant, and fulfilling? That is the basic question that this article wishes to raise. For the main part, it presents a descriptive analysis of our current situation, which is meant to expose features of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) that seem both salient and easily aligned with central Buddhist concerns. Developed without any requirement for, or expectation of, the existence of real subjects and selves, Buddhist views and practices clearly resonate with the assumptions of unreal mind and mere appearance that are associated with AI and VR. Yet Buddhists famously also declare that the illusion-like nature of things does not negate, but in fact entails, universal care and deep meaning. I conclude by suggesting that such doctrinal claims may be tested for practical relevance in the present and emerging world of interconnectivity and illusion.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 26, 2019
21 Lessons for the 21st Century. By Yuval Noah Harari. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2018, ISBN 9780525512172 (hardback), U.S. $28.00.
Reviewed by Victor Forte
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
Buddhist Philosophy, Free Will, and Artificial Intelligence
James V. Luisi
Independent Scholar
Can Buddhist philosophy and Western philosophical conceptions of free will intelligently inform each other? Repetti has described one possible Buddhist option of solving the free will problem by identifying a middle path between the extremes of rigid determinism, as understood by the hard determinist, and random indeterminism, as understood by the hard indeterminist. In support of this middle path option, I draw upon ideas from the fields of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, evolutionary psychology, and related fields that together render coherent the ideas that determinism may be non-rigid and that indeterminism may be non-random, on the one hand, and upon Buddhist ideas, such as interdependence, the four-cornered negation, and what Repetti describes as the Buddhist conception of causation as “wiggly,” to argue that Buddhist philosophy has much to contribute to the field of artificial intelligence, on the other hand. Together, I suggest, the Buddhist philosopher and the software expert would form an ideal team to take on the task of constructing genuine artificial intelligence capable of the sort of conscious agency that human beings apparently possess.
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