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Good morning. Last week Elon Musk announced, “Goodbye Homework.” He was referring to ChatGPT an open-source programme that can generate computer-coding, essays, stories and even poems that are almost indistinguishable from those written by humans. Opinion is divided as to whether this will help or spell disaster for the classroom - and perhaps humanity. It's easily available online, so I asked ChatGPT to script a Thought for the Day on the ethical and spiritual implications of itself in the style of me citing something from Bhagavad-gita. In the time it takes me to write “Good morning’, the AI bot had produced something credible. Here’s an example from it: “As Vaishnava Hindus, we believe that the material world is an illusion, a temporary manifestation of the eternal reality of the divine… and we must look beyond it for a deeper understanding of truth.” Eerily, this bot has scoured the internet for my old Thought for the Day scripts and swotted up on Vedanta philosophy. It’s impressive, but also disturbing. Here are words without an author. Ideas without a thinker. A call to action without anyone responsible. But AI is meant to be a tool with humans as its operators. AI researcher, Sara Lumbreras, describes AI programmes as ‘belief-machines’; for we rely on them to generate answers and predictions in which we can have credible faith to guide our decisions and policies in the real world. But what we get out depends on what we put in – from the data we feed the programme to the biases we hold when interpreting what it produces. Lumbreras recommends that humans must oversee AI belief machines, checking the accuracy of what they produce as best we can and more importantly using our judgement to assess their ethical and emotional rightness. Vedanta philosophy has always focussed on the search for truth. This goes beyond simple fact-checking. The Bhagavat Purana claims that: “The highest truth is reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all.” For Hindus, that highest understanding stems from a recognition that each of us is a transcendent spiritual being living out embodied life within the material world. And, this ancient philosophy poses an essential question for the modern world of artificial intelligence, chatbots and deep fakes: How can we learn to distinguish truth from illusion when AI presents its messages and conclusions to us. I believe is only by the vigilance of our God-given intelligence can we hope to harness this phenomenal technology so that it really does serve the welfare of all.