Digital Dharma

August 15, 2024
Another exercise in cracker-barrel spirituality from New Age guru Chopra. Why worry about AI? By Chopra's lights, artificial intelligence "has the ability to make your thinking more intelligent and your inner life more conscious." Marveling at the fact that AI efficiently rendered one of his YouTube videos into a Hindi translation without a lick of effort on his part--and apparently effortless enlightenment is a selling point here--Chopra sings the praises of the machine as an agent for personal growth and, moreover, an agent that, though perhaps it shouldn't supplant sessions with "your personal therapist," can distill the wisdom of the ages into a few guiding maxims. To his minimal credit, Chopra at least recognizes that the machine itself doesn't have consciousness or "spiritual wisdom," but it can create abstracts of a huge library of it "with amazing speed and distill centuries of teaching into simple, clear ideas." Voil� instant karma and effortless dharma, a dumbing-down that Chopra further dumbs down with his relentless cheerleading. It's the machine that does most of the work in this book: Chopra asks ChatGPT and other engines a question or gives it a directive such as "Give seven bullet points to indicate the major benefits of meditation." Wait a beat, and the machine spits out a list that includes the nostrum, "Meditation can help alleviate insomnia and improve sleep quality by calming the mind and reducing racing thoughts that often disrupt sleep." Given that half of the book is machine generated, one wonders if AI is getting a share of the royalties. The question that's truly asked and answered is this: Since the machine can generate canned spiritual instruction for anyone who asks, it would seem that a book such as this will soon be redundant, if not already so. Useful as a demonstration of AI's cut-and-paste possibilities, but little more.

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October 7, 2024
Despite persistent fears that artificial intelligence can stifle creativity and free thought, the technology—when properly used—serves as a powerful tool for self-discovery, according to this intermittently intriguing account from bestseller Chopra (Quantum Healing). He contends that as a “dynamic tool that listens... and responds any way it is asked to,” AI can fill the role of a modern-day guru by providing personalized spiritual guidance without risking the personality cults that often develop around human gurus. Chopra also shows how seekers can tap into their “personal dharma,” or “ideal life,” by using AI to break their aspirations into action steps, expand their self-awareness, and process painful memories. Some sections of the book are written by AI based on Chopra’s prompts—ChatGPT’s response to “Please give me a mantra to meditate with today” is “Om Shanti,” which can, the program explains, confer “a sense of inner peace.” In an appendix, Chopra and various AI programs discuss head-scratchers like whether math is a human construct. These sections mostly demonstrate that AI is good at regurgitating self-help bromides and fuzzy mysticism. Things improve when Chopra provides his own down-to-earth advice on reaching one’s “personal dharma,” which includes sensible self-reflection to counteract destructive emotions (“I can see now that getting angry has become a pattern”). Despite some revealing moments, Chopra’s blend of pop psychology and Eastern philosophy doesn’t benefit from being outsourced to tech.