Long read: An AI-powered Bhagavad Gita project and a question: Who am AI?

We have been deeply influenced by how Gurcharan Das thinks about and writes about India. So, it was poignant to read his thoughts on how AI is now going to interplay with his authorship to give the world the benefit of his wisdom but in a new avatar (quite literally a “new avatar”). In this thought-provoking essay, Mr Das grapples with issues that many of us are trying to come to terms with as we deal with our AI avatars.

A year or so ago, Mr Das was roped into a project which involves “bringing out the world’s classics using Artificial Intelligence.” The sponsors of this project, says Mr Das, “chose the Bhagavad Gita from India and wondered if I’d be a guide for this interactive AI book. The voice explained that the AI book would encourage readers to ask questions while reading the text. Answers would come from my cloned voice, based on 15 hours of interviews conducted in advance. At the end of each chapter, the reader would engage in a discussion with my clone.”

Fascinated by the nature of this project, Mr Das signed up. Initially, things went well and Mr Das made swift progress:

“In the spirit of the Age, I acquired three AI interns to assist me with research on the Gita: Chat GPT, Perplexity, and Claude. ChatGPT is the most empathetic, Perplexity is best at research and gives links to follow-up, and Claude has a literary style. Gemini is a good standby. They are not only surprisingly competent but cheerfully, tirelessly deliver the results at the speed of light. When I have occasionally pointed out that something is not quite right, they readily try again. There is no hint of complaint or the need of approval. Each time they reply with calm assurance and keep getting better at their work. What I got last week was better than six months ago. I feel grateful they’ve taken away so much of the drudgery of looking for a specific text, cross-referencing it, and even summarizing it before I decide to read the actual book.”

But then deeper, more complex issues started worrying Mr Das. His first worry is that friends think about the output that his AI avatars produce as authentic ‘Gurcharan Das’:

“What will my friends think of me when they find me spouting all sorts of fake stuff? Even when they realize their mistake, they will still carry this worrisome image of me. I worry that my clone will know everything, including my memories, things that I don’t want to talk about. And if there are multiple copies of me, an entire of army of fakes? It’s a sickening thought.”

Then there is an even deeper issue of identity:

“AI has opened up for me profound questions about the self, identity, and authenticity. The moment I began to conceptualize my AI book on the Bhagavad Gita, I felt uneasy, a feeling that I was delegating my own personal inquiry to a machine. ‘Who am I?’ is a question that I feel is a lived experience, not to be answered by a machine. The idea of a ‘cloned twin’ of my thoughts providing answers feels almost a betrayal of what has been a lifetime journey.

I have begun to worry about being cloned by a machine. It feels eerie having my fictional twin running around giving talks, making podcasts and videos on my books, racking up hundreds and thousands of viewers. There is also the weird possibility of a feminine clone with a persuasive woman’s voice saying all kinds of things that I’ve never said. Even more scary is the thought that my clone may clean up my bank account, and confirm the transaction on the phone via voice recognition software.

After watching the clones of others performing on WhatsApp, I am afraid of how I will perceive myself when my replica begins to mime my behaviour.”

Another level deeper says Mr Das is the issue around whether AI will be able to keep up with changes in his actual persona:

“Then there is the problem of time. We are all evolving, and my clone will be stuck in the past, based on data when I was first interviewed for the Gita book. My clone will be a stale version of me.”

However, Mr Das ends the essay on a positive note. He says whilst the concern that AI will become sentient one day is real, there are more profound aspects of our identity that AI cannot emulate and that is what will make each of us the ‘real deal’ and AI a mere clone of each of us:

“A vital property of consciousness is spontaneity, a freedom to choose my goals and objectives. This is central to the human experience. AI has so far achieved an excellent ability to follow commands. The autonomy that underlies spontaneity is what the Gita calls atman, an intangible ‘life force’, which is also the self-awareness behind all thought, intention and action. AI, as it currently exists, operates based on algorithms and data without conscious awareness or purposes of its own. To become truly sentient, AI still has far to go to achieve this spontaneity and freedom…

Even before AI, I was troubled by the fragility of my ‘self’. But in the busyness of day to day life, I tended to forget it. AI has now brought stage front that same anxiety. My wife has also changed her mind and wants me to drop the project. A dear friend too has been insistent, pushing me not to go ahead. Re-reading the Gita, however, has made me re-think my values and the path to the good life. I spent a quarter of a century in the business world, where I was praised and rewarded for being acquisitive, sharp, and for making a profit. I did not particularly admire these qualities. Instead, I valued kindness, openness, and generosity, which some of my colleagues considered to be traits of failure in the “real world”. This contradiction always troubled me. The Gita has made me pause, making me aware of this paradox. What is at stake is our conception of success.”