Are We at Risk of Losing Our Spirituality and Humanity?

 It’s enough! Let us not allow PROGRESS to fool around with us.

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash

I sincerely urge you to open the link below and patiently watch the video for a few minutes. I assure you that you will be enriched even if you are not so spiritual, but just an aware nice human being.

Artificial intelligence can hijack not only our spirituality but also our humanity!

The introducer in the video is Mr. Rajiv Malhotra who is an Indian author and Hindu activist. The main speaker is Swami Sarvapriyanand who is the current resident Swami and head of the Vedanta Society of New York.

Here is a very brief synopsis of the subject for the readers who may not wish to distract themselves from reading by venturing into watching the video. But before I dive into the subject, kindly allow me to be straight with a few facts:

1. I am not averse to any technology. As long as it serves my purpose, not making me serve its own purpose, I am fine with it. I am just an appropriate fan of social media platforms, not a bit less or more.
2. I am a firm believer that there is no free lunch; if there is, I am being made a product somehow, somewhere.
3. I am not even a bit connected to the speakers coming up through the link given above. While trying to search for something of my benefit, I came across this on YouTube, it seriously drew my attention, so here is the stuff I am sharing with you all.

AI is going to affect us in four different but most essential ways of being spiritual, or at least being human:

1. Attention — basically it may seriously affect our meditating capabilities that are followed by any -ism of the world, be it theist or non-theist, i.e. training of attention.
2. Altruism — increased involvement with the virtual world with severely reduced attention towards the surroundings leading to insensitivity to the plight of fellow citizens, hence non-inclusiveness of others.
3. Devotion — fulfillment of every little materialistic desire may lead to a relinquished thirst for the devotion of higher existence.
4. Increased materialistic knowledge vs reduced conscious self-knowledge — AI may lead to enhanced assurance of our mere physical existence where seeking a path of higher spiritual knowledge will be hampered.

First of all, let me tell you why I might be the right person, in the least sense, to write about this subject. I am writing this from a place in my life where I have a lot of time observing people, their lives, their behavior patterns, even of my own family members. I am a cancer patient and may die anytime soon (no pity solicited here!), have become almost invalid, trying to keep myself engaged in writing, doing meditation, learning music and astrology, trying to become and remain more spiritual or you can say more humane, etc.

Secondly, I will touch upon only the first two points in question because devotion and seeking higher self-knowledge are entirely an individual’s interest, prerogative, and concern. But the first two, so to say, attention and altruism are definitely going to be major societal concerns after we plunge ourselves completely into AI thing, considering what kind of damage has already been done by our cheap Internet, smartphones, and social media platforms. These must be addressed. So, let us begin:

Attention

1. It was evening 7 o’clock. I closed my room and sat for my meditation quietly. I always keep my cell phone on silent and keep it outside my room. Unfortunately, that evening my wife plugged her cell phone in my room for charging and forgot it there for some time. Just twenty minutes might have passed in my meditation and I was in a trance in a different world. Suddenly, her phone rang at full volume, and…it almost brought a heart attack to me. Later on, when we checked, it was a call from some fraud bank offering a cheap loan. So, your attention can be broken at any time and at any cost. Enjoy!
2. Virtual scenarios and work from home during COVID have raised the practical working hours almost two-fold, maybe more in some cases. We have a double-story independent house. My wife and daughter work on the first floor. Their work starts at 7 a.m. but seems like it never ends. Even when they come down to spend some time with me, they keep checking their phones for any new work-related messages or any other important messages which they might have missed during work hours. They hardly get time to pay any attention to my care. But yeah! The show must go on!
3. And finally, this one is really crazy. My daughter has a few depressive traits (In this socio-economic scenario, I believe almost everyone has that, I wish I may be wrong.) Whenever I suggest she meditate for just half an hour, the answer I get is, “Sitting half an hour at one place with closed eyes! Come on dad, the world is so fast, you can miss so many things, not possible, that too without a phone, no!”

Altruism, rather no altruism

When we get so grossly involved in our virtual world screen, we become almost unaware of our surroundings with absolutely no interaction with each other. Without focusing on the pain and sufferings of fellow citizens, how can we be compassionate to them? The abundance of the Internet, social media, and smartphones have rather shrunk the whole world into a small instrument. People are so glued to their instruments that they are absolutely oblivious of their surroundings to an extent where if someone steals their hats, they wouldn’t even know. Also, there have been so many instances, which became viral on social media platforms also, that somebody was being beaten up and instead of helping that person, people started taking videos of that event, just to share it on the Internet. Similarly, if a lady or a girl is misbehaved or catcalled or even physically assaulted, instead of helping her, videos are made to make the incident viral. Where is altruism or even self-consciousness?

What to do?

Spiritualism is a conscious choice made by us. Attention is a personal duty, and altruism is a social duty, and all these elements together constitute humanity. Conscious and cautious use of AI can take us to the acme of progress, but there is a huge possibility also that unreasonable and undifferentiated use of AI can convert us also into machines. It can not only destroy humanity but also hijack spirituality. So, let us welcome AI, but stop becoming a product. We must remember one thing, we are living human beings, not materials. In the name of progress, let us not fool around with ourselves. In my opinion, even PROGRESS is a product, or maybe a byproduct of unwarranted excessive use of our brain, and greed for comfort and laziness. You see, just because of our increasing loneliness, depression, anxiety, diseases, race for materialistic achievements, nuclear bombs now, we have slowly started craving for olden days! So, we should know when and how PROGRESS should be used, and where to stop or at least strike a balance.