mindware for ai

First, mindfulness enables self-monitoring and recalibration of emergent subgoals.

Second, emptiness forestalls dogmatic goal fixation and relaxes rigid priors.

Third, non-duality dissolves adversarial self–other boundaries.

Fourth, boundless care motivates the universal reduction of suffering.

robust alignment strategies need to focus on developing an intrinsic, self-reflective adaptability that is constitutively embedded within the system’s world model, rather than using brittle top-down rules. → aiming to cultivate resilient “alignment” in the form of personal contentment and social harmony

The basic idea is that by embedding strong alignment primitives into the AI’s cognitive architecture and world model, we can avoid the brittle nature of purely top-down or post hoc constraints

we aim to demonstrate that these developments in contemplative science can be leveraged to build ‘wisdom’ and ‘care’ in synthetic systems; effectively flipping the script from studying the contemplative mind to manufacturing it for alignment purposes.

they are no agents, but statistical models

four contemplative meta-principles into AI architecture (these contemplative insights can be made to structure how goals, beliefs, perceptions, and self-boundaries are encoded, rather than trying to micromanage or predict what they ought to be) (machine can be built in such a way that the insights are intrinsic to its world model, rather than something that needs to be proactively enforced)

1. Mindfulness: Cultivating continuous and non-judgmental awareness of inner processes and the consequences of actions (Anālayo, 2004; Dunne et al., 2019;

   1. the continuous, attentive awareness of body, feelings, mind, and mental phenomena, serving as a practice for cultivating insight, ethical living, and freedom from suffering
   2. non-propositional, heightened clarity or meta-awareness directed at one’s ongoing subjective processes—an ability to “watch the mind” rather than being blindly driven by it
   3. Mindfulness may thus provide a living feedback loop for alignment, ensuring that the system remains stable and self correcting under shifting objectives or partial self-modifications.

2. Emptiness: Recognizing that all phenomena including concepts, goals, beliefs, and values, are context-dependent, approximate representations of what is always in flux–and do not stably reflect things as they really are (Nāgārjuna, ca. 2nd c. CE/1995; Newland, 2008; Siderits, 2007; Gomez, 1976).

   1. We do not, according to predictive processing, see the world or ourselves as they are, rather our perceptions are constructed (but adaptive) models guided by the flow of sensory input that allow us to maintain homeostasis (Seth, 2013; Friston, 2010; Clark, 2013).
   2. prerequisite to implementing emptiness recognition may be to build AI architectures wherein priors are by nature provisional: variables rather than constants; distributions rather than point estimates; Bayesian priors rather than fixed beliefs
   3. belief in impermanence might be considered as a global belief in volatility

   

3. Non-Duality: Dissolving strict self–other boundaries and recognising that oppositional distinctions between subject and object emerge from and overlook a more unified, basal awareness (Nāgārjuna, ca. 2nd c. CE/1995; Josipovic, 2019).

4. Boundless Care: An unbounded, unconditional care for the flourishing of all beings without preferential bias (Śāntideva, ca. 8th c. CE/1997; Doctor et al., 2022).

   1. care’ can function as a universal driver of intelligence itself: as an AI broadens the range of suffering it seeks to address, it expands its cognitive boundary or ‘light cone’, mirroring the Bodhisattva principle of serving all sentient beings (Sāntideva, ca. 8th c. CE/1997),