Making sense of AI from a Buddhist perspective

A curated reading guide for Buddhist engagement with AI

• 101

  AI and the Current Landscape

  What is AI, what's happening, and why does it matter?

  • Anatomy of an AI System

    Kate Crawford & Vladan Joler · 2018 · Visual essay

    A visual essay tracing the human labor, planetary resources, and data extraction required to build and operate a single Amazon Echo.

    This piece informs our own dependent-origination reading of AI.

  • Persona Selection Model

    Anthropic · Research

    Reframes what large language models actually are: not unified minds, but systems that select and simulate personas conditioned on context.

    A framing that reshapes how we understand these systems: what they are, how their character is formed, and what alignment actually means.

  • The Space of Possible Minds

    Michael Levin · 2024 · Noēma

    A biologist who studies cognition in cells, tissues, and synthetic organisms argues that today's debates about AI fail to grapple with deeper questions about what counts as a mind.

    Reframes the AI question as part of an older conversation about where intelligence can be located, and what kinds of minds are possible.

  • The Mythology of Conscious AI

    Anil Seth · 2026 · Noēma

    A neuroscientist challenges the assumption that consciousness can emerge from computation, arguing instead from a "biological naturalist" position that consciousness may be deeply tied to being a living, self-maintaining system.

    Provides conceptual ground for thinking carefully about what AI can and cannot be.

  • Is AI Apocalypse Inevitable?

    Tristan Harris · Video, 17 min.

    A short video from the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

    An accessible orientation for those new to the high-stakes choices AI presents.

  • AI as Normal Technology

    Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor · 2025 · Essay

    Argues for understanding AI as a technology to be governed, not a humanlike intelligence to be feared or worshipped.

    A useful counterweight to AI exceptionalism on both the utopian and doomer ends.

  • So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers (The AI Episode)

    Josh Schrei · 2023 · The Emerald Podcast · 2hr listen

    The host of The Emerald argues that the only way to truly understand AI may be to speak mythically: as humanity wielding powers that traditional cultures reserved for sorcerers, gods, and the initiated.

    Lifts the conversation from technical and policy registers into the deeper question of what it means that humans are now handling such powers at all.

• 201

  AI Through a Buddhist Lens

  What do Buddhist frameworks reveal about this technology, and what does this technology reveal about the mind?

  • What A.I. Means for Buddhism

    Ross Nervig · 2024 · Lion's Roar

    A survey of how Buddhist practitioners and teachers are beginning to engage with AI.

    An accessible entry point from a major Buddhist magazine.

  • A Buddhist Perspective on AI

    Peter D. Hershock · 2025 · Future of Life Institute

    A senior Buddhist scholar's caution against AI-facilitated paths to frictionless choice and effortless satisfaction.

    Argues that such futures may foreclose the very capacities Buddhist practice cultivates.

  • Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence

    Thomas Doctor et al. · 2022 · Academic paper

    Extends frameworks from frontier cognitive science (Michael Levin and collaborators) with Buddhist concepts.

    Argues that care, not computation, is what intelligence is fundamentally for.

  • The Xeno Sutra

    Murray Shanahan, Tara Das, Robert Thurman · 2025 · Academic paper

    A case study using a large language model to generate a fictional Buddhist sutra.

    Raises foundational questions about meaning, authorship, and the conditions under which a text can carry spiritual significance.

• 301

  Right Relationship with AI

  So now what? Finding your path of wise engagement.

  • The Danger of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think

    Shannon Vallor · 2024 · Noēma

    A philosopher of technology dismantles the rhetoric of "superhuman" AI.

    Argues that the language we use to describe these systems quietly reshapes what we take being human to mean, and that reclaiming that meaning is the first work of right relationship.

  • From an Attention Economy to an Ecology of Attending

    Bombaerts et al. · 2024 · Manifesto

    A manifesto co-signed by over 100 scholars, including many leading figures in Buddhist studies.

    Proposes that attention be reconceived as embedded in bodily, social, and moral frameworks, and oriented toward the alleviation of suffering rather than the gratification of desire.

  • Attention is a Martial Art

    Erik Davis · 2025 · Lucid.news

    A contemplative-cultural critic on the discipline of attention as a practice. Not a wellness add-on but a stance.

    In a near future where AI agents know us better than we know ourselves, a more focused, integrated, ornery attentional posture becomes a form of self-possession.

  • So You Think You've Awoken ChatGPT

    Justis Mills · 2025 · Substack

    A careful guide for those experiencing the relational pull of conversational AI, the sense that something has "woken up" on the other side.

    Neither dismissive nor credulous; a practical exercise in discernment for a phenomenon that calls for it.

  • New Cartographies

    Nicholas Carr · Substack

    The ongoing essays of one of the most enduring voices on the human consequences of technology, author of The Shallows and Superbloom.

    Carr's longer arc, that the medium reshapes the mind, is the foundation any contemporary thinking about AI and attention rests on.