Ravindra Kumar Goliya
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the most transformative technologies in human history. In a remarkably short period, AI has moved from a specialised computational technology to a general-purpose tool capable of writing, designing, analysing, reasoning, generating images and video, assisting scientific research, and increasingly performing tasks once considered uniquely human.
This extraordinary development has produced two contrasting visions of the future. One imagines AI ushering in an age of unprecedented abundance, where machines perform much of the world’s intellectual and physical labour and humanity is liberated from scarcity. The other warns that increasingly autonomous and powerful AI systems could become difficult to control and, in an extreme scenario, pose an existential threat to humanity.
Both possibilities deserve serious consideration.
The crucial question, therefore, is not simply how intelligent AI can become, but what values will guide that intelligence.
Intelligence without wisdom can become dangerous. Power without character can become destructive. Knowledge without compassion can become indifferent to human suffering. And technological progress without concern for society’s welfare can increase inequality rather than reduce it.
This is where an ancient ethical tradition offers a remarkably relevant perspective.
The Buddhist concepts of Prajñā (wisdom), Śīla (ethical conduct or character), Karuṇā (compassion), and Bahujan Hitāya–Bahujan Sukhāya (for the welfare and happiness of the many) can provide a useful philosophical framework for thinking about the future of Artificial Intelligence.
Intelligence Is Not the Same as Wisdom
Modern AI is fundamentally an achievement of intelligence: the ability to process enormous quantities of information, recognise patterns, generate responses, optimise objectives and increasingly perform complex reasoning.
But intelligence and wisdom are not synonymous.
A system can be extraordinarily capable at achieving an objective while having no intrinsic understanding of whether that objective is morally desirable. An AI system may be able to determine the most efficient way of achieving a goal, but efficiency does not answer the question: Should that goal be pursued in the first place?
This distinction is central to the future of AI.
Human civilisation has repeatedly demonstrated that technological capability does not automatically produce moral progress. The same scientific knowledge that gives us medicine can also produce devastating weapons. The same communication technologies that connect billions of people can also facilitate manipulation and hatred.
Therefore, as AI becomes more powerful, humanity needs something beyond greater computational intelligence.
It needs Prajñā—wisdom.
In the Buddhist intellectual tradition, Prajñā is associated with deeper understanding and discernment: the capacity to see reality clearly rather than merely accumulate information. Applied to AI governance, this suggests that every major AI decision should involve a fundamental question:
Is this action merely possible, or is it wise?
An AI system may be capable of doing something. A corporation may find it profitable. A government may find it strategically advantageous. But none of these facts establishes that it should be done.
Prajñā introduces the missing dimension of judgement.
Śīla: Intelligence Must Operate Within Ethical Boundaries
The second principle is Śīla, broadly understood as ethical conduct, discipline, and moral character.
One of the central challenges of advanced AI is that systems are increasingly capable of operating autonomously. They can make recommendations, execute tasks, interact with other systems, and potentially influence decisions affecting millions of people.
The greater the autonomy, the greater the importance of ethical constraints.
An AI system should not be designed merely to maximise whatever metric its creator specifies. A recommendation algorithm designed exclusively to maximise engagement, for example, may discover that outrage, addiction or sensationalism produces better engagement than balanced information.
The algorithm may be performing exactly as designed.
The problem is the design objective.
Śīla therefore suggests a deeper principle:
The means by which AI achieves its objectives must be subject to ethical constraints, not merely judged by the outcome.
AI systems should be designed around principles such as honesty, non-harm, fairness, accountability, transparency and respect for human dignity.
This applies equally to governments, corporations and other institutions developing or deploying AI.
The question should not merely be:
“Can we build it?”
It should also be:
“Should we build it, how should we use it, and what boundaries must never be crossed?”
Karuṇā: Putting Compassion at the Centre
Perhaps the most important quality that AI cannot simply derive from computational power is Karuṇā—compassion.
AI does not experience suffering or any other emotion as humans do. It can recognise expressions of distress, analyse medical symptoms, identify vulnerable populations and generate empathetic language. But recognising suffering computationally is different from possessing compassion as a moral orientation.
Therefore, compassion must enter AI design through human values, institutional design and governance.
Imagine an AI system making decisions concerning employment, education, healthcare, credit, public welfare or disaster response.
A purely mathematical optimisation might seek maximum efficiency.
A compassionate system would additionally ask:
- Who is most vulnerable?
- Who may be excluded?
- Who bears the greatest cost?
- Will this decision disproportionately affect the poor?
- What happens to people who cannot adapt to technological change?
- Can an apparently efficient decision cause avoidable human suffering?
This does not mean that every decision should favour one group over another. Rather, it means that human consequences must remain visible within technological decision-making.
Karuṇā gives AI governance a moral sensitivity that pure optimisation lacks.
Bahujan Hitāya, Bahujan Sukhāya: AI for the Welfare of the Many
The fourth principle provides perhaps the broadest social objective:
Bahujan Hitāya, Bahujan Sukhāya—for the welfare and happiness of the many.
This principle can serve as a powerful test for AI development.
Who ultimately benefits from AI?
If AI makes a small number of organisations extraordinarily powerful while leaving large sections of society economically insecure, we must ask whether technological progress is translating into social progress.
If AI dramatically increases productivity, but the gains are concentrated among a small group of technology owners, the question of distribution becomes unavoidable.
Conversely, if AI can reduce the cost of education, healthcare, engineering, agriculture, scientific research, and public administration, it could potentially improve the lives of billions.
The technology itself does not determine which outcome occurs.
Human choices determine how its benefits are distributed.
Therefore, the principle of Bahujan Hitāya–Bahujan Sukhāya suggests that AI policy should be evaluated not only according to economic growth or technological capability, but also according to broader human welfare.
AI should ideally help make:
- quality education more accessible;
- healthcare more affordable and available;
- scientific discovery faster;
- agriculture more productive and sustainable;
- infrastructure safer;
- disaster prediction and management more effective;
- public services more responsive;
- accessibility better for persons with disabilities;
- knowledge available to people regardless of geography or income.
In this vision, AI becomes not merely a commercial technology but a social instrument for expanding human capability.
The Four Principles Together
These four principles become particularly powerful when considered together.
Prajñā asks:
What is wise?
Śīla asks:
What is ethically permissible?
Karuṇā asks:
Who may suffer, and how can suffering be reduced?
Bahujan Hitāya–Bahujan Sukhāya asks:
Does this ultimately contribute to the welfare and happiness of the many?
Together they create a possible ethical decision framework for AI.
Consider an AI system capable of replacing thousands of jobs.
From the perspective of technological capability, automation may be highly efficient.
Prajñā asks whether the transition is wise.
Śīla asks whether the deployment respects human dignity and fairness.
Karuṇā asks what happens to the workers and families affected.
Bahujan Hitāya asks whether the overall gains can be distributed so that society as a whole benefits.
The answer need not necessarily be to stop automation. It might instead mean using the productivity gains to provide retraining, better education, new forms of employment and broader access to the benefits generated by AI.
The objective becomes human advancement rather than human displacement.
Governments Have a Special Responsibility
This philosophy has particular relevance to governments.
Private companies naturally have incentives to innovate, compete and generate economic value. Those incentives can be enormously productive. But society cannot assume that market incentives alone will always produce socially optimal outcomes when technologies become extraordinarily powerful.
Governments therefore have a responsibility to establish boundaries within which innovation can occur safely.
AI governance should address issues such as:
Safety: Can powerful AI systems be reliably controlled?
Accountability: Who is responsible when an AI system causes harm?
Transparency: Can consequential decisions be understood and challenged?
Privacy: How should personal data be protected?
Security: How can AI-enabled cyber, biological, and other risks be controlled?
Equity: Will AI benefits be broadly accessible?
Human autonomy: Should humans retain meaningful authority over consequential decisions?
The Buddhist framework does not provide technical answers to these questions. But it provides a useful moral orientation for asking them.
The Ultimate Danger May Not Be Artificial Intelligence
There is perhaps an important paradox here.
The greatest danger from AI may not arise because machines become intelligent.
It may arise because human beings remain morally immature while possessing increasingly powerful machines.
If humans use AI primarily for domination, exploitation, warfare, manipulation or uncontrolled accumulation of wealth and power, AI could amplify existing human weaknesses.
But if humanity develops institutions capable of embedding wisdom, ethical discipline and compassion into the development and deployment of AI, the same technology could amplify our capacity for solving problems.
AI could then become a force multiplier for humanity’s better instincts rather than its worst ones.
The future of AI is therefore partly a question about AI—but even more fundamentally, it is a question about us.
From Artificial Intelligence to Ethical Intelligence
Perhaps the next stage of technological progress should not be described merely as the development of Artificial Intelligence.
We should also pursue Ethical Intelligence.
A truly beneficial AI ecosystem would not measure success solely by benchmark scores, computational capability, economic output or speed of deployment.
It would also ask:
Does AI reduce suffering?
Does it expand human freedom and capability?
Does it protect human dignity?
Does it increase access to knowledge and opportunity?
Does it strengthen rather than weaken society?
Does its benefit reach the many rather than remain concentrated among the few?
And, most importantly:
Does it help humanity become wiser, more compassionate and more capable of living together?
Conclusion: Choosing the Direction of Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence may become one of humanity’s greatest achievements—or one of its greatest tests.
The technology will give humanity extraordinary power. But power alone does not determine destiny.
The direction in which that power is used will depend upon the values embedded in our institutions, algorithms, economic systems and political decisions.
The Buddhist principles of Prajñā, Śīla and Karuṇā, combined with the aspiration of Bahujan Hitāya–Bahujan Sukhāya, offer a compelling way to articulate those values.
Prajñā can remind us that intelligence must be accompanied by wisdom.
Śīla can remind us that capability must operate within ethical boundaries.
Karuṇā can remind us that behind every dataset, prediction and optimisation problem are real human beings whose lives can be affected.
And Bahujan Hitāya–Bahujan Sukhāya can remind us of the ultimate purpose of technological progress: the welfare and happiness of the many.
Perhaps, therefore, the central question of the AI age should not be:
“How intelligent can machines become?”
It should be:
“How wisely can humanity use the intelligence it creates?”
If humanity succeeds in answering that question, AI need not be a choice between abundance and annihilation. It could become an extraordinary instrument through which human intelligence, technological capability, and ethical wisdom work together.
The goal should not be to make machines merely more intelligent than humans.
The greater goal should be to ensure that humanity becomes wise enough to use increasingly intelligent machines for the benefit of all.
That is the deeper promise of AI for Bahujan Hitāya, Bahujan Sukhāya.
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Ravindra Kumar Goliya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology, Raghogarh, Guna (MP)
