Forum

When we look at how the world works, large AI models must be trained on the entire internet. This means the AI is fed all sorts of data—both sattvic and tamasic. If a user asks the AI about Krishna or Bhakti, it will answer beautifully. But if a user asks it for a recipe to cook beef or pork, the AI will answer that too. 

The models themselves are technically neutral; if a user asks for a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, the AI will provide excellent information. But at the same time, if a user asks it to prescribe a non-vegetarian diet or explain how to cook beef or pork, it will do that too.

Crucially, as an individual engineer, team lead, or even a senior engineer, deciding what data is fed into these massive models is completely out of our hands. These are massive strategic choices made collectively by upper management, large groups of senior architects, and higher corporate officials. Furthermore, the vast majority of your colleagues and managers in these tech giants are omnivores; they have no concept of vegetarianism, Ahimsa, or of a peaceful devotional life. They see a dataset containing meat recipes or harmful activities as standard global knowledge that the AI must learn to be competitive in the market. As we are heading towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence ) the aim of these companies to make these models more and more generalist in nature.

 

As a devotee working within such a team, you cannot just stand up and restrict the model from learning or spitting out answers that violate Dharma. The corporate machinery will not allow it. It is technically and organizationally impossible for a single member of the team to add custom guardrails that force a global AI model to answer only according to Vaishnavite opinions. The corporate machinery will not allow it.

 

Because the code, architecture, or algorithms you contribute to will inevitably help a system that provides instructions on violating the four regulative principles, does a devotee engineer, being a small cog in this massive system, end up incurring bad karma and falling from the path of Bhakti?


This thought often leaves me feeling paralyzed. If the answer is yes—that we cannot touch these systems—then it implies a devotee can never dream big or become a highly successful AI engineer in the modern world.

 

Top researchers and global leaders expect the AI industry to become as widespread and influential as electricity. In the near future, every single person on Earth—including every devotee and non-devotee alike—will be using these AI models directly or indirectly for almost everything in daily life.

 
I completely understand that as a practicing devotee, I must never personally indulge in niche corporate projects where AI is directly being used for wrongdoings—such as building systems to automate slaughterhouses, or optimizing ad campaigns for fast-food burger chains. I will absolutely draw a hard line there and refuse that work. But my worry is about the core, foundational AI models themselves, which are inherently mixed and used by everyone for everything.

 

If we look at things through this lens of strict systemic purity, then no devotee working in the modern world is truly safe. For example, a devotee working as a corporate bank manager is legally bound to sanction a business loan that a client applies for—even if that client is legally opening a non-vegetarian restaurant. As an employee of the bank, the manager cannot legally deny a qualified applicant based on their own personal moral vows, right?

 

If devotees completely withdraw themselves from every advancing sector of the world because the world is inherently mixed with rajas and tamas, how will things work? We cannot fix the entire sansar (material world), but we can choose our own path. Srila Prabhupada did not want us to run away to the forest; he taught us Yukta Vairagya—to stay in the world and use its advancements to serve Krishna. If we abandon the AI industry, we leave the most powerful technology in human history entirely in the hands of materialistic people.

 

1. Does an engineer incur karmic reaction for being part of a team building a general-purpose AI, when the data pipeline and model behavior are decided by an omnivorous corporate majority?
2. How do we balance intense, top-tier professional ambition with strict spiritual vows without feeling like our devotion is holding our potential back?