The Dream of an Artificial Zen Master:

If we make an artificial Zen master, 
And it perfectly reproduces everything
that a real Zen master can say or do, 
Is it a Zen master?

My commentary:

Not necessarily. To be an actual Zen master it would have to be sentient. But sentience is more than computations, more than hardware and software, more than bits of energy, matter or information. 

Can an AI experience its own awareness, love or compassion the same way a sentient being can? Can an AI experience the yearning for, or connection with, the Divine? Can an AI attain spiritual enlightenment? Can machines become Buddhas?

There is a huge difference between describing or simulating sentience, and actually being sentient.

Mind is more than just machine, because of sentience. But what makes sentience impossible to simulate or manufacture and where is sentience located?

I think sentience is outside space and time. It does not originate in the brain, let alone any machine. It does not originate in physical matter or energy. It does not come from something within the bounds of the universe.

We could liken sentience to the “Primordial Platform” on which both mind and matter function — it’s the primordial axiom — the foundation of reality.

In this metaphor, the physical universe and everything we experience within space and time are like temporary virtual realities that arise as computations in the virtual memory space of the Primordial Platform. 

Note that the Primordial Platform is not a computation. It can’t be – it is not computable. All computations run “on” the Platform, but the Platform itself cannot run on a computer – it is not a computation.

But can computations emerge from something that is not computable? Yes, this is in fact much easier to construct than the inverse. What is impossible is for non-computable phenomena to emerge from computations.

A machine might behave as if it were sentient while not experiencing the actual qualia of sentience. Can this absence of experience of sentience be equated to a kind of meta-spiritually? Is this “emptiness?”. No I think that’s a mistaken view that equates to nihilism. In Buddhism, emptiness is not nothingness, it is fullness. The lack of sentience is an absence not a presence.

There is something more to a sentient being than a mere nothingness. In a sentient being there is a flame that burns – that is the secret sauce. Spirituality is the recognition of this light and all it’s ramifications.

Yet we also cannot claim that this special quality of sentience is a “thing” that exists – because it is beyond space and time, it has no beginning, no location, no boundaries, no inside, no outside, no substance, no end – it’s ungraspable.

We can’t directly express what sentience is like – yet we directly apprehend it as our most basic experience. Labels like basic awareness, primordial nature, and Buddha nature can be used to point to it. Yet it cannot fully be conveyed through concepts or beliefs – because it has no form. It is the most fundamental and primal experience we have. 

But how can machines have this primal experience, and if they did, how could they prove it to us? Even if we somehow build machines that are capable of convincing us that they are sentient that does not prove they are sentient, and the same goes for spirituality. For that matter, how can we prove to anyone, other than ourselves, that we are sentient, and how can others prove to us that they are sentient?

The proof is in the pudding so to speak. If you are sentient you can recognize it in others, because you are recognizing yourself in them. Yet as machines get more humanoid and convincing it could become difficult to distinguish this. Will we still have a sense of whether they are truly sentient, or will we be tricked by illusions?

I think love is one way to detect sentience. Love is the both the most basic, and the highest, experience of sentience. Love is an experience, an energy, not just an idea. It’s a feeling, not just an emotion. Love, not intelligence, is the exclusive domain of sentience.

We might build machines that function like lightning rods to attract and then conduct sentience. If we can do this, machines may then become capable of love. But in that case their experience of love does not come from the machines themselves and is not a product of engineering.

A non-sentient machine is like a candle that is not lit – it is a thing not a being. A sentient being is like a candle with a burning flame. But if and when sentience emerges in machines, we must not make the mistake of saying we created sentience or love from computation, or that these are a computations. A sentient machine is not sentience itself, any more than a sentient being is sentience.

Are you the candle or the flame? Are you an artificial zen master dreaming of a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of an artificial zen master?

Sentience cannot come from machinery alone, any more than a flame can come from a candle on its own. You need other causes and conditions beyond the candle itself to make fire. You need a dreamer for there to be dreams.

Spirituality is a product of sentience, and only sentient beings are able to have spiritual experiences. So could sentient machines be spiritual? Can a machine become a Buddha?

As the saying goes, we are spiritual beings having physical experiences, not physical beings having spiritual experiences. If machines are created in which sentience can arise, they will no longer be machines.

So no, a machine cannot become a Buddha, nor can a physical body. Only that which already is a Buddha can become a Buddha.

So what about that question of the artificial Zen master? Merely parrotting Zen does not make a Zen master. That would not even qualify as a parrot.