-Robot AI ‘god’ to Preach in Japanese Temple?

A robot modeled after a Buddhist goddess is going to preach the teachings of Buddha at the Kodaiji Temple in the ancient city of Kyoto. From  Express:

The humanoid robot is modeled after Kannon Bodhisattva, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. The robot’s name is Mindar and it gave its first speech on the Heart Sutra, a key scripture in Buddhist teaching. The Japan Times reported that the teachings spoken by the robot offer a path to “overcome all fear, destroy all wrong perceptions and realise perfect nirvana.”

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Response: Shades of the Anti-Christ? Before he passed on Stephen Hawking warned humanity that AI’s might be our downfall and in Dan Brown’s latest novel, Origin, an AI takes over on his own initiative and characters in the book suggest that the ‘gods’ worshipped and in control in the future might be advanced AIs.

In this case, the robot AI is presented as a fake Buddhist god and a harmless teacher but does it reflect a greater role for AIs in the future? Still ahead are a number of issues related to robots and AIs. Will AIs be allowed to reproduce themselves in the future and will they gain some kind of ‘human’ rights as they become more independent in the future?

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