What does happiness mean? Soon you will be able to ask the question to “AI Buddha”, a tool created by Japanese researchers to provide spiritual guidance drawn from ancient scriptures through artificial intelligence.
Still in the testing phase, this software, developed jointly by a team of scholars specializing in religion and computer science at Kyoto University, has been programmed to memorize around 1,000 teachings taken from Buddhist texts.
An artificial intelligence dialog system, called “Buddhabot”, answers users’ questions based on their learning of these texts.
An augmented reality background shows the little Buddha sitting cross-legged in the real environment captured by the device’s camera.
“Wisdom of Ancient Times”
According to Seiji Kumagai, a leading software developer at Kyoto University, Buddha’s AI is also seen as a therapeutic distraction from “an increasingly stressful real world.”
“Our goal is for people to apply this ancient wisdom to their lives in this modern society and find ways to be happier,” he adds.
According to Mr. Kumagai, this tool could be a step towards a virtual spirit world, which he sees as a potential alternative to the shrinking of Japanese temples linked to depopulation.
open spirit
But before the digital Buddha can go public, the team still needs to improve its grammar and deal with contextual errors that sometimes make its answers meaningless, which can make it misleading and even dangerous, Kumagai said.
On Tuesday, students and members of Kyoto University were able to test the tool.
Yuya Ohara, a 19-year-old soccer fan, who asked the Buddha what makes an ideal soccer player, got this answer: “let go of your possessiveness.”
“I would have laughed if that answer came from my friends,” he told AFP.
“But since it came from the Buddha, I was more open-minded,” he said, interpreting it as an insistence that he not keep the ball too long.
Source: BFM TV
