Peter Hershock is an Advisor to AI & Faith and the Director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i where he helped launch the Center’s initiative on Humane Artificial Intelligence focusing on the societal impacts and ethical issues raised by emerging technologies. Peter holds a Ph.D. in Asian and Comparative Philosophy, and much of his research and writing focuses on drawing from Buddhist conceptual resources to reflect on contemporary issues of global concern. He is the author of several books, his latest titled Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (2021).
FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKER TO BUDDHIST & TECH ETHICIST
My conversation with Peter Hershock began with him sharing his journey from a spiritually precocious Catholic child to a Buddhist practitioner and scholar. An early pivotal childhood experience occurred at age seven when a young Hershock realized that though “God was everywhere,” he could not point to God anywhere—what Hershock calls his first koan. His spiritual curiosity eventually led him to discover meditation, and in 1978, he began practicing Buddhism with a Korean Zen teacher.
His interest in technology’s social and ethical impact emerged while traveling in Bali in the mid-1980s. There, he was struck by the observation that local children could discuss American TV shows like MacGyver but didn’t know of the Mahābhārata or The Bhagavad-gītā or other stories from their Hindu tradition. The experience crystallized Hershock’s understanding of media technology as a global colonizing force—except now it was not land or labor being colonized, but consciousness itself. This recognition of technology’s colonizing power led him to write his first book in the late 1990s, examining Buddhism’s relationship to the information age. His concerns deepened after spending six months in China on a Berggruen fellowship, where he witnessed the unprecedented speed of adoption and integration of digital technologies such as social media and smartphones into mainstream culture. Seeing China’s rapid transformation convinced him this was where the rest of the world was headed with AI—and that we needed to “put the brakes on.”
WHAT BUDDHISM CAN OFFER TO AI ETHICS
Hershock frames his analysis of technology’s impact around two fundamental Buddhist insights from the Buddha’s enlightenment: interdependence and karma. The principle of interdependence points to the nature of reality as “relationality all the way down,” as Hershock puts it. In other words, phenomena that appear to exist independently are merely abstractions from relational dynamics. Such an understanding is crucial, Hershock argues, for helping us to see technology not simply as a collection of tools but as larger systems of social relations that both enable and constrain human possibilities.
The Buddhist concept of karma, distinct from Hindu interpretations, describes a participatory cosmos where our values, intentions, and actions shape our experiences and opportunities as human beings. Buddhist interpretations of karma emphasize that we each possess the ability to change the direction things are going provided we can mindfully attend to our present moment’s experience. As Hershock points out, this framework implies both individual and collective responsibility: while much blame can be directed toward big tech companies and governments for misusing our data or developing harmful applications, nothing can happen without our willing engagement in these systems. Any successful challenge to the status quo requires both individual responses, such as “digital fasting,” and collective actions, such as “data strikes,” noting that personal solutions alone cannot address the systemic problems posed by the attention economy. Crucially, AI systems cannot improve without our data, a point that we can and should leverage politically to demand change. Hershock also highlights the importance of teaching our kids to cultivate presence through meditation, prayer, or other means so that they can learn to connect with the external world unmediated by technology.
THE POTENTIAL AND PITFALLS OF AI IN SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
While acknowledging AI’s legitimate role as an adjunct to Buddhist scholarship and practice—from rapid text translation to potentially using brain imaging technology to optimize meditation techniques for everyone—Hershock is concerned about a possible future in which the spiritual experience becomes engineered and spiritual development no longer requires personal effort. Such a scenario is akin to the Buddhist god realm, where the inhabitants who have incarnated there enjoy highly pleasant and long lives. However, such an environment does not afford the necessary struggles and conflicts necessary to fully realize awakening (whereas the human realm, on the other hand, offers just the right balance). In other words, Hershock suggests that too much technological comfort and the removal of friction might similarly hinder our capacity for spiritual development and liberating relationships. He also warns of “digital eugenics,” where people are programmed to be a certain way rather than allowed to organically develop on their own. Using the example of Buddhism’s historical treatment of women as subordinate to men, he points out the danger of hardwiring any era’s moral understanding into technological systems that shape human experience.
The critical question, according to Hershock, comes back to the one most spiritual traditions pose: “Am I being present in a way that matters most?” Hershock suggests that if we can maintain this inquiry while engaging with intelligent technology and orient towards becoming increasingly valuable to others, we’ll likely be OK. However, if we become lulled into a dream state of algorithmic comfort where all our wishes are anticipated and fulfilled, we risk entering a kind of karmic cul-de-sac from which there may be no exit. The challenge is in “recognizing ourselves in the dynamics of the world around us”—only then can we reform harmful systems of competition and convenience into liberating relationships of cooperation and compassion.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Peter Hershock for participating in this interview and contributing his time and energy.
