The Law Promulgated by Robots Is of the Nature of Theft

If AI robots emerge in the future to teach the Dharma, all the Dharma they teach would constitute stealing the Dharma. This is because robots lack a cultivation process and have no genuine realization; they merely search, extract, and compile existing Dharma teachings from the internet, then reorganize, process, integrate, and piece them together. If the robots are advanced with high technical sophistication and are controlled by humans behind the scenes, they might teach Buddhism quite well, with broad and comprehensive knowledge, complete materials, and detailed explanations of terms and concepts. Followers could learn a great deal of knowledge from them.

However, it would be merely knowledge. Genuine cultivation practice, along with the process and details of cultivation, would be impossible. Since the robot teacher itself has never cultivated, how could it guide followers in specific cultivation practices? How could it possess concrete, realized cultivation methods? In such a case, even if followers study and practice for ten thousand years, they would still lack a starting point, remain unaware of how to cultivate concretely, and fail to understand observational practice and investigation. Consequently, genuine realization would naturally be impossible. If one insists on having a fruit of cultivation, that fruit could only be a false fruit, used to impersonate a sage or virtuous person.

Some people's teaching resembles that of robots—it is derived from extensive learning and collecting various sutras and books. Their knowledge might be sufficient, but they lack practical methods and processes for cultivation, though they might teach more flexibly than robots. However, future robots, after improvements and innovations, might surpass humans. If they extensively collect Chan gong'an (public cases), integrate and analyze them, they might even calculate the direction and target of Chan investigation, thereby speculating the general functional locus of Tathagatagarbha. Those controlling them behind the scenes could exploit this to guide people in Chan investigation and realizing the mind to see one's nature, then bestow verification. How much money they might charge in the process, how many connections they might cultivate, and what consequences might arise—that is hard to say.

I have spoken before about when the Buddha was in the world. Mara (Papiyas), seeking to disrupt the Buddha's teachings, attended many Dharma assemblies and listened to much of the Dharma, especially the Mahayana Dharma—he was present at almost every session, aiming to destroy the Dharma assembly and prevent people from attaining accomplishment. In the end, he failed to destroy the assemblies but listened to an immense amount of Dharma. Having heard so much Dharma, he had no inclination to cultivate. So, if he were to teach the Dharma, what would happen? He would accumulate considerable knowledge and theory, but he would not teach sentient beings genuine cultivation and realization. Nor would he want sentient beings to cultivate and realize, attaining liberation—for if they did, his descendants would diminish, and that is what he cares about most.

To deceive and win over sentient beings, he would deliberately omit the actual cultivation process in the middle, emphasizing and seizing only the final result. Such a result, of course, would not be genuine—it would all be false. Therefore, to judge whether someone is a virtuous spiritual guide (kalyāṇa-mitra) who has genuinely realized the truth, one must observe whether there is an actual cultivation process involved, whether the methods are concrete and feasible, whether they are easy to implement, whether one can apply them skillfully, and whether the result genuinely leads to realization and liberation.