The ageless and eternal photo frame of Bhagavad Gita with Lord Krishna as the charioteer reining the thoughts of Arjuna before the Mahabharat war is perfect backdrop for an ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework. The power of human mind to become free before exercising freedom to act is an interesting synthesis of various strands of human thought and action that this epic text portrays. Some context before the content.
Anthropic flew an Indian vedantic monk of the Swami Ramakrishna order from east to west coast in search of answers to troubling questions. A viral video of a faculty from the famed Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru, raised an alarm on the relevance of human intelligence in this contemporary era of civilisational crisis. Anthropic’s report warns of self-replicative AI worms capable of acting as autonomous agents taking over home gadgets from home owners with the human in the loop tightly strangulated by an autonomous ‘wormic’ knot! What do all these three have in common? Let us go further.
The vedantic monk’s coast to coast travel amongst a comity of theologists and philosophers at Anthropic’s headquarters signalled the core of Vedanta that tries to define the anonymous “I” in individuals and how this is different from the artificial “I” in intelligence. IISc faculty’s profundity also borders on the larger issue of human civilisation’s core intellect that uniquely differentiates itself from artificial intelligence’s economic intellect. The AI worms is a monstrous ‘sci-fi’ type reality that shuts human form their homes despite being inside. All of this needs to dovetail with NITI Aayog’s seventh pillar of its Responsible AI framework: positive human values which has two distinct elements, humans and values. While AI seems to rob the human part, the million dollar question is what happens to the value part?
Swami Dayananda in his unique style said “a value is a value if the value of value is valuable to oneself.” The catchword ‘self’ triggers the question of the century dominated by modern AI that needs to differentiate between good and evil in Kali yuga’s self. The three preceding cosmic cycles have clear lines of differentiation between the good and evil—Krita yuga in two different worlds (Devas and Asuras), Treta yuga in two different countries (Bharat and Lanka) and Dvapara yuga in two different families (Pandavas and Kauravas). It is in this Kali yuga that both good and evil reside in the same individual with the differentiating line inside and not outside. With a self-created AI trying to draw the line of difference between good and bad inside the self, the answer lies in the core of a mystic package wrapped in a foggy cloud of cerebral material. To clear the fog and unravel the mystery, how the Bhagavad Gita becomes more relevant now than ever is from one of my friend’s brilliant explanation.
When one of my friends was invited to address a conference on Bhagavad Gita, he confessed his inability to philosophise the text and presented the context. The mind of Arjuna before the Mahabharat war was contrasted with King Ashoka after the Pataliputra war. Ashoka’s realisation came after the war, seeing the dead, handicapped, and orphaned, and then he went in search of true realisation. His quest in search of freedom of mind followed his exercise of his freedom of action. Arjuna’s was contrary to Ashoka’s with Lord Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita making the epic difference. The entire text of the sacred Gita revolves around the duty-reward theory with a need to develop free mind before exercising the freedom to act. It is in the 63rd sloka of the 18th chapter of the Gita that Krishna finally tells Arjuna to act according to his free consciousness after hoarding him with tons and tons of pure wisdom in seventeen chapters earlier. It is only after being cleared of all doubts in his mind did Arjuna exercise his freedom to act and fought the famous Mahabharat war. Moral: Freedom of mind needs to precede freedom of action.
In a meeting organised by one of the big four consulting firms recently, I shared the same insights as a speaker in response to a question on how AI will shape societal behaviour. Given the fact that society is a comity of communities which again are bundles of identical individuals who have isolated and unique ‘self,’ if AI has to shape societal behaviour, then AI models have to develop a free mind before it becomes an agentic AI with a freedom to Act. In short: AI Chariots Need Charioteer Krishna!
vaidhya@sastra.edu
