Nonhuman Artifice: Buddhism, Language, and Artificial Intelligence

This article draws on Buddhist thought and praxis to analyze the intersection of language, self, and moral patienthood in the context of emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Recent advances in artificial neural networks (ANNs) and large language models (LLMs) have unsettled the longstanding assumption that language is an exclusively human capability. AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot exhibit a linguistic fluency nearly indistinguishable from that of human interlocutors. At the same time, the linguist Noam Chomsky has maintained that only human beings are capable of language and thought, relegating nonhumans to a lower order of intelligence. Is language the exclusive medium of the human mind? And how should one interpret nonhuman entities that communicate in human languages? This article argues that Buddhist traditions offer a non-anthropocentric framework for approaching these questions. Bringing Wang Guowei’s 王國維 (1877–1927) concept of selflessness (wuwo 無我) into dialogue with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) on the limits of human cognitive structures and Theodor W. Adorno’s (1903–1969) negative aesthetics, this article shows how Buddhist approaches decenter the human self while opening space for nonhuman cognition and presence. Through readings of cultural artifacts ranging from the jātaka tale of the Nine-Colored Deer (jiu se lu 九色鹿) to contemporary robot monks and Buddhist chatbots, the article contextualizes AI within the framework of interspecies communication and compassion. Rather than reducing debates about AI to questions of biological versus synthetic substrates or other markers of sentience, a Buddhist-inflected ethics treats the instability of human criteria for recognizing minds as an invitation to deeper ethical reflection, situating AI within broader discourses of suffering, interspecies compassion, and human-nonhuman relations.