Buddhism & AI Initiative
About
Updated 05/18/26The Buddhism & AI Initiative was publicly launched on August 19, 2025, founded by Chris Scammell, former Chief Operating Officer at Conjecture, an AI safety company. Scammell built the initiative around a core team including Peter D. Hershock (adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center and author of "Buddhism and Intelligent Technology"), Alex Sakarassian (a startup founder turned Buddhist chaplain), Ryan Stagg (former digital strategist for the Dalai Lama's Mind & Life Institute), and Austin Pick (longtime administrator at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado). The initiative received initial funding from the Future of Life Institute. The organization frames its work around three value propositions. First, Buddhism's rich intellectual tradition examining consciousness, intelligence, and interdependence offers alternative perspectives on AI development, sentience, and alignment, and may suggest new technical research agendas. Second, Buddhism holds significant global moral authority — the Dalai Lama is taken seriously on the world stage — but Buddhist institutions currently lack preparedness for AI governance conversations. Third, Buddhist practices like meditation can provide psychological grounding and meaning-making as AI-driven societal disruption accelerates. The initiative's three-stage operational approach begins with field assessment: mapping individuals and organizations at the Buddhism-AI intersection. It then moves to developing positive human-AI futures with network members, and finally to catalyzing funding for grassroots and technical projects. As of late 2025, the team had engaged over 50 Buddhist leaders, AI professionals, and social innovators, and met with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India in October 2025. The initiative maintains an active Substack newsletter and has been featured in Religion News Service and Interfaith America.
Theory of Change
The Buddhism & AI Initiative argues that Buddhism, as a recognized global moral authority with 2,600 years of systematic inquiry into the human mind, can serve as a meaningful stakeholder in shaping AI development and governance. By bringing Buddhist communities up to speed on AI, facilitating dialogue between Buddhist voices and AI researchers, and supporting technical alignment research inspired by contemplative insights, the initiative aims to inject wisdom, compassion, and non-materialist perspectives on consciousness into AI development. The causal chain runs from network-building and field mapping, to developing a positive vision for human-AI futures, to eventually funding projects that infuse Buddhist principles into AI alignment, governance, and deployment — with the aim of producing wiser, more ethically grounded AI systems and more resilient communities facing rapid AI-driven change.
Discussion
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts.
Details
- Start Date
- Aug 22, 2025
- End Date
- -
- Expected Duration
- -
- Funding Raised to Date
- -