Navigating Amidst Artificial Absurdity

“At present, mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man’s ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cultural machinery, an organised collective means for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites”. – Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Volumes 21-22, pp 1090-1091, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

The ideology of Dataism has posed a new challenge to human existence. The ongoing Cold War between Open AI and DeepSeek and the recent inconclusive Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris on February 10-11, 2025, have underscored the urgent need for consensus building on the righteous use of AI. It’s no longer enough to accept technological advancements passively; we must engage in deep, thoughtful discussions about the implications of Artificial Intelligence for human life.

Users have experienced that AI platforms, whether OpenAI’s US-based models or DeepSeek the Chinese variant, generate content shaped by their creators’ training data and design choices, reflecting inherent subjectivity in their responses. Like Wikipedia – despite being a biased and controlled platform – which carries the tag of ‘free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit’, AI platforms bring their own biases, eventually becoming a standard. What you get in the process is ‘Artificial Truth’ – established through a machine by human beings. It is not just the deep fake created in the form of a picture or a video is the challenge, the real crisis is the construction of Artificial Truth through in built biases.

Another problem with this data-centric life and controlled intelligence is the new forms of monopolies it would create. Already, data has been a new tool of colonisation. During the earlier Cold War, when the major powers developed their nuclear weapons, they brought in treaties on test bans to impose the nuclear apartheid. Suddenly, they realised that the usage of nuclear weapons was a recipe for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The absurd dependence on technology-driven intelligence is suicidal for human intelligence. Still, all the countries are mindlessly investing in the same. Ethical AI is the new argument that denies other countries the ability to develop competitive foundational models of AI. The double standards of the so-called developed countries to ensure technology dependence and unregulated profit-making from the world is nothing but a new form of colonisation. The Global South must come together and ensure that AI is accessible to all and implemented for the good of humankind. If we do not provide free data through blind usage, the foundational platforms would be useless.

The concept of state sovereignty is facing multiple challenges in the present world. Social media platforms and international NGOs are already being misused to interfere in other countries with clandestine intentions. The absurd spread of AI technology through mobile phones would make it more challenging to secure democratic spaces with sovereign legal controls.

The biggest question is of human consciousness and emotions. We can artificially train machines to shape all dimensions of our lives – economic, political and social. Can it replace our emotions and relationships as well? Due to the belief in Bharatiya thinking, Prime Minister Narendra Modi exuded confidence in human intelligence. While addressing the Paris Summit, he said, “Some people worry about machines becoming superior in intelligence to humans. But, no one holds the key to our collective future and shared destiny other than us humans”. Bharatiya way of seeing life – as the expansion of consciousness and not just meant for material advancement – can lead us to a spiritualisation of technology. We need not discard Artificial Intelligence as a technological advancement but find ways to use it judiciously.

Spirituality and science are both universal and two sides of the same coin. They are meant to navigate life as part of nature and not above nature. The space of Artificial Intelligence would engulf humanity in the new Cold War based on data manipulation and monopolisation. Bharatiya thought process of spiritualising technology is the only way forward to face this ‘evolutionary crisis’ identified by Sri Aurobindo. Yes, Bharat must invest and prepare itself for the emerging AI competition. At the same time, our spiritual ingenuity should be quest to integrate knowledge that would bridge technological advancement with human consciousness.