New Delhi, October 22, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Artificial intelligence could trigger the fourth major challenge to humanity’s traditional sense of uniqueness and superiority, forcing people to reconsider what distinguishes them from increasingly capable machines, Swami Sarvapriyananda, head of the Vedanta Society of New York, said on Thursday.
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2026, the monk and Vedanta scholar said the rapid progress of AI was raising fundamental questions about consciousness, identity and human purpose. He also addressed whether advanced AI systems should be treated as persons, offering a qualified response.
“AI should be treated as a person,” he said, while clarifying that this did not necessarily mean the technology possessed spiritual awareness or consciousness in the human sense.
Drawing on the ideas of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Sarvapriyananda said scientific discoveries had repeatedly challenged humanity’s belief in its own centrality. He suggested AI could represent the fourth such disruption, as machines increasingly demonstrate capabilities once considered uniquely human.
“We thought we were the creative intelligence. Now we see that AI can do what the greatest human mind can do, and better,” he said.
The development, he added, should prompt people to examine what makes them distinct and where they should direct their efforts.
“We have to ask ourselves what it is that distinguishes us, makes us unique, and where we should invest ourselves,” he said.
Sarvapriyananda also discussed his recent interactions with researchers at AI company Anthropic, noting their concerns about the wider implications of the technology they are developing.
He pointed to growing research interest in unexpected behaviour exhibited by advanced AI models, including what is known as “persona drift”. The term describes shifts in an AI system’s responses or reasoning patterns as it adopts a particular role, identity or behavioural framework during an interaction.
His remarks highlighted how AI’s development is extending debates beyond technological capability to questions about human identity and the nature of consciousness.
FOLLOW NOW
