CBD 2026: Buddhist Ways of Being Human in the Age of AI with James Gentry, PhD

What can Buddhist approaches to being human and maximizing human potential teach humanity as it confronts the unprecedented identity crisis of artificial intelligence? Over the course of 2500 years, Buddhist traditions have emphasized deep interconnectedness, wisdom and compassion and developed a range of practices and theories designed to expand the scope of what it means to be human toward the enhancement of human flourishing. Buddhist traditions have also often embraced technological innovations and the study of technology and the arts in the service of reaching these goals. This talk examines these Buddhist approaches to the human-technology frontier for the doctrinal and contemplative resources they can offer in addressing challenges posed by emergent AI technologies to the boundaries of human intelligence and capability. It asks how Buddhist approaches can expand our vision of mind-body-world relationships and how such expansions could help ethically inform developments in not only AI design and training, but also in robotics and other AI-driven technological enhancements.

This keynote lecture is part one of a two-part series with James Gentry in the Contemplation By Design Summit.

To extend your knowledge and skills of material presented during this keynote please consider also attending James's iPause Guided Practice session titled Tonglen ("Giving and Taking"): A Buddhist Approach to Developing Empathy and Expanding the Scope of Care on Oct. 21 from 7:30-8:15am if your schedule permits you to do so.

James Gentry is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, with particular focus on the literature and history of its Tantric traditions. He is the author of The Bodhisattva’s Body in a Pill (University of Virginia Press, 2026), which traces the history of the maṇi pill, one of Tibet’s most popular and enduring Buddhist relic traditions, from its precedents in the 8th and 9th centuries to the present period as a lens into the broader history of Tantra in Tibet at the nexus of ritual and medicine; and Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings, and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (Brill, 2017), which examines the roles of Tantric material and sensory objects in the lives and institutions of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhists.

This session is part of the FREE Contemplation by Design Summit, Oct. 14-25, 2026.

The full summit schedule for this year will be posted at: https://med.stanford.edu/contemplation/summit.html.