Tokyo, Nov. 11 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Buddhist community is searching for ways to incorporate artificial intelligence as it struggles with challenges such as a waning interest in Buddhism and a decline in the number of “danka” household supporters of specific temples on the back of the country’s shrinking population and moves to close family graves. The community has come up with a smartphone service to help spread the teachings of Buddha and an information management tool for head priests of Buddhist temples. Conversational AI BuddhaBot-Plus answers questions from smartphone users by quoting Sutta Nipata, a collection of discourses of Buddha. Faced with an admission by a user on spending too much time scrolling through social media, the chatbot replied, “We should discern the true nature of sensual pleasures.” BuddhaBot-Plus was developed by Seiji Kumagai, a professor of Buddhism at Kyoto University, and Teraverse Co., a startup from the university. Its prototype was developed in 2021, after some monks voiced worries about the decline of Buddhism. The developers released the current version in 2023 by feeding several Buddhist scriptures to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Bhutan, which has Tibetan Buddhism as its state religion, decided last year to introduce BuddhaBot as a learning material. Choten Dorji, former deputy secretary of the Central Monastic Body of Bhutan, which is in charge of educating monks, said that the chatbot has “very concrete resources and concrete answers,” adding that it “gives the citations of the manuscript and further explanations.” In April this year, Bodaijyu, a maker of Buddhist altars based in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, started providing a service on the Line messaging app called “AI Fukujushoku-kun,” or “Mr. AI Assistant Priest,” to support temple operations. The service centrally manages information on danka, making it easy to adjust the schedule for memorial services for such families. An AI chatbot that has been fed data on how a head priest speaks also answers questions from such supporters. Kazuhiro Nakazawa, who heads the company and is a Buddhist monk himself, said, “As the AI service reduces the burden of clerical work on monks, they should use the extra time to interact more” with danka. Norio Miwa, head priest of Shogakuji, a Buddhist temple in Aisai, Aichi, which introduced the AI service, said, “We hope that our danka families are reminded of our temple” through the service. The rapid evolution of AI, however, has brought an even bigger risk of cyberattacks and information breaches as well as providing inaccurate answers. Kumagai of Kyoto University said, “Worries people shared in confidence being leaked would be deeply unsettling.” He said, “The important thing (when using AI) is the purpose and motivation to result in people’s happiness.” “We still don’t know to what extent we can bring AI into Buddhism,” he added. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
