Technology Category
Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General IntelligenceNatural Language Processing: GenerationHumans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
The Xeno Sutra: Can Meaning and Value be Ascribed to an AI-Generated "Sacred" Text?
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates whether generative AI can participate in religious meaning-making, specifically examining the semantic potential of large language models (LLMs) to fabricate Buddhist “scriptures” and the implications for human value systems. Employing LLM-generated texts, the research conducts a systematic qualitative analysis grounded in philosophical hermeneutics and literary criticism. Results demonstrate that the generated texts exhibit rich imagery, intricate metaphorical structures, and profound philosophical reflection—semantic density that resists dismissal solely on grounds of algorithmic provenance. This work constitutes the first systematic validation of AI’s capacity to achieve semantic depth in simulating religious discourse, challenging the reductive assumption that “mechanical generation entails semantic vacuity.” It thereby opens a novel interdisciplinary pathway for dialogue between digital technology and spiritual traditions, while revealing the hermeneutic resilience and adaptive capacity of Buddhist thought in addressing emerging technological ethics challenges.
Technology Category
Application Category
📝 Abstract
This paper presents a case study in the use of a large language model to generate a fictional Buddhist "sutr"', and offers a detailed analysis of the resulting text from a philosophical and literary point of view. The conceptual subtlety, rich imagery, and density of allusion found in the text make it hard to causally dismiss on account of its mechanistic origin. This raises questions about how we, as a society, should come to terms with the potentially unsettling possibility of a technology that encroaches on human meaning-making. We suggest that Buddhist philosophy, by its very nature, is well placed to adapt.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Can AI-generated sacred texts have meaning and value?
How should society respond to AI encroaching on human meaning-making?
Can Buddhist philosophy adapt to AI-generated spiritual content?
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
AI-generated fictional Buddhist sutra
Philosophical and literary analysis
Buddhist philosophy adaptation
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