Spirituality Studies 11-2 Fall 2025 71 Gábor Pék, Gejza M. Timčák From a scientific perspective, intelligence is quite complex to define due to its multifaceted nature. However, one widely accepted definition of intelligence is “the ability to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment” (Sternberg 1977, 11). The interrelation of knowledge and action in a more modern interpretation can be the following: “Knowledge and action are the central relations between mind and world. In action, world is adapted to mind. In knowledge, mind is adapted to world. When world is maladapted to mind, there is a residue of desire. When mind is maladapted to world, there is a residue of belief. Desire aspires to action; belief aspires to knowledge. The point of desire is action; the point of belief is knowledge” (Williamson 2002, 1–20). In the domain of AI, intelligence is usually defined as the capability of a machine to mimic “cognitive” functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving. It’s important to note that these definitions may vary depending on the context and there is no universally agreed-upon definition of intelligence. Still, what we must highlight here that for an AI to indeed understand what it produces, thus, to be intelligent; we must assume self-awareness, however, this would contradict with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (Gödel 1992, 57) as highlighted by Roger Penrose in various interviews and talks (This Is World 2025a; Breakthrough 2025). His key insight is that consciousness cannot be the byproduct of any computation which totally aligns with the traditional definition of consciousness. We delve into the question with more details in Section 4, but first we examine whether AI can assist svādhyāya. 3 On the Pros and Cons of Using AI for Self-Study To understand the issues in question, it is necessary to analyse the various aspects of AI including its strong and weak points. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a non-human program, as opposed to the intelligence of humans, animals or other living systems. More precisely, AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning (i.e., the acquisition of information and rules for using the information), reasoning (i.e., using rules to reach approximate or definite conclusions), and self-correction. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is an AI system with generalized human cognitive abilities. When presented with an unfamiliar task, AGI can find a solution without human intervention. Historically, the field of AI assumed the need to program “intelligence” manually. However, it turned out to be challenging to add all the knowledge to a digital system by hand. For this reason, machine learning was applied to provide this knowledge which is the ability of computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. Today, machine learning and artificial intelligence are used interchangeably, which though, can be misleading (Murphy 2022, 28). AI has gained an immersive interest when Open AI released their chat engine called ChatGPT for public use in November 2022. Since then, the growth of AI-related initiatives has speeded up exponentially aiming at automizing all mechanical works humanity did so far. Still, there are various questions and debates (Nielsen 2023) raised whether AI can indeed help us live a more fulfilling life or more likely to threaten our physical, mental, and emotional health. AI carries several challenges, one of which is its potential to foster dependency on digital systems. Also, it has the capacity to amplify our existing biases and preconceptions. These systems are trained on huge datasets, which can mirror the biases and stereotypes of their human developers. Thus, during interaction with these AI systems, one may inadvertently perpetuate these biases and stereotypes. Lastly, the issue of surveillance and manipulation is a noteworthy risk posed by AI. Others also bring up questions and information sharing around the “existential risk” potentially imposed by an Artificial Superintelligence (termed as ASI xRisk) (Nielsen 2023).
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