Understanding Spirituality from the perspective of AI - Part 1

We have entered the age of AI. By now, most of us know how AI works. We are familiar with the terminology of AI, GEN AI, training data, patterns, deep neural networks etc.

For years, I have been learning and understanding the foundational concepts of AI and observing the similarities between AI and the human mind. The connect between growth of a human child and foundational basics of an AI model seems obvious to me. When I see a child learning and writing the script of his/her life, I reflect that this is from where the foundational people who started working on Artificial Intelligence took its inspiration from.

With this article, my intent is to explore and understand spirituality from the perspective of AI. Sometimes, it is difficult to learn a new subject in which we have limited exposure or understanding but it can be made easier if we try to understand an unknown or new subject from the perspective of our existing knowledge or experience.

Artificial Intelligence is inspired from Human intelligence - how a human child learns, grows, processes information, makes decisions, reacts to situations, builds habits, develops a personality etc. Let’s try to understand spirituality from when a child is born. Consider when a child is born, a fresh, blank slate to a brand-new AI model scope. There is nothing yet, no training data which means at present there are INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.

EVERY CHILD and by every, I mean, EVERY CHILD is born with INFINITE POSSIBILITIES. Now, most of what the child will become depends on the training data. Here, the training data is the environment, surroundings, parents/guardians, neighborhood, schooling, peer group, country etc. Same for the brand-new AI model. A lot depends on the AI engineers who are going to feed the initial training data to build the AI model that uses a combination of several techniques like deep neural networks, logistic regression, n-dimensional recommendations etc. Here, the AI engineers are the child’s parents or guardians. The parents or guardians especially the one who spends most time with the child – it can be the mother, father, grandparent or a nanny, is the first AI engineers who introduces the world to the child.

Even without doing anything, the child is learning by observing (the possibility of the evolution of AI is in learning by observing). The child begins building the AI model by learning from the parents/guardians’ behaviors, reactions, responses, conversations, habits etc. For a newborn child, there is no filter. They absorb everything like a sponge. As the child grows, certain habits are built into the child for good e.g. – brushing the teeth, taking bath every day, sleep ritual, food habits etc. And this training data continues to build the AI model.

A lot more training happens in the first 7 years of the child’s life, that starts to define the limitations of this AI model, the likes, dislikes, reactions, habits, what makes the child happy, what can make the child sad, habits like if the child is attracted to using a mobile phone because the child has seen the parents on phone most of the time, or habit of singing, meditating, dancing, yoga, exercising etc.

Everything is fed into this child’s AI model for a period of 7 years.

Many scriptures esp. the Hindu scriptures mention the importance of the first 7 years in a human being’s spiritual life. Research also shows that 100% of the brain development happen in the first 7 years out of which 80% happens up to the age of 2. So, by the time a child is 7 years of age, the AI model is ready to start running with test data. But, in the real world, there is not much testing, so we can say real data.

So, now the child uses this AI model. This AI model is the EGO- Human’s ego. A child learns that I have this name, I eat like this, I have these likes and dislikes, I have these boundaries etc.

By understanding the EGO from the perspective of the AI model gives us 2 insights.

One, that the first 7 years in a child’s age is an opportunity for us as parents or guardians to create a nourishing environment for our children to evolve as a human being, exposing them to variety of situations, to support them in creating a multi-dimensional personality and to teach them to be loving and happy by being examples. I can give an example of my life, I do not remember the situations that I was exposed to as a child, but when I started working, I found myself doing well as a computer engineer. Over the years I also,found myself painting, doing photography to the point of becoming a professional photographer, meditating, writing articles, poems, doing graphic designing, interior decoration, enjoying dancing, speaking at public places or counselling etc. My intent here is not to boast about myself but just exploring the possibility to create a multi-dimensional personality in a child instead of creating a boundary of doing just one job for their entire life etc.

It also gives us an insight that the child is learning by observing, so we as parents/guardians can let go of some  of our habits that the child is imitating and is injurious to their growth.

Second insight that this perspective gives us is to understand and become more aware of our own habits, reactions, behaviors, patterns. For example, I get angry in a certain situation. By observing my parents with whom I have spent most of the time with, I can see from where I have picked these habits from and realize that this is not what I am.

Originally, we consider our ego self as I am. It is just an accumulation of the learning that happened from the time I was born, my name given to me by my family, habits, reactions, behaviors, experiences learnt from my childhood environment and experiences. But there is something beyond this AI model, there is something beyond this ego self that I call as me, myself.

By becoming aware of our habits, triggers, reactions, our thinking patterns, I can start creating a distance from who I am and this egoic self and begin my journey to discovering Who AM I ?