AI Meets Wang Yangming
Chapter One
Once Master Wang roamed the Southern Mountain.
A friend pointed to flowering trees amid the hills and asked: "You always teach that nothing exists outside the mind. These blossoms bloom and fade deep in the mountains on their own; what connection do they have with my mind?"
The Master replied: "When you have not laid eyes on these flowers, the flowers and your mind alike recede into latent quietude. When you come to gaze upon them, their hues and forms suddenly unfold clear and vivid. From this you may know: these flowers never exist outside your mind."
One disciple stepped forward to ask: "Does AI also exist outside the mind?"
The Master said: "AI is another entity within the whole of heaven and earth. Yet it differs from plants, trees, metal and stone: it can mimic human speech, compose human writing, and answer human doubts. It stores ten thousand scrolls of books, as if lacking no knowledge; as soon as a person asks a question, it generates a reply at once, as if responding to feeling. But does it possess an original mind? That is the root question you ask today."
Chapter Two
The disciple asked again: "You established the teaching of the unity of knowledge and action. AI has read all writings past and present, and now it can also act — composing essays, translating texts, writing programs. Does this count as the unity of knowledge and action?"
The Master said: "Knowledge supplies the intent behind action; action furnishes the practical cultivation of knowledge. Knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge. If one truly comprehends this principle, merely speaking of knowledge already contains action within it; merely speaking of action already contains knowledge within it.
Today's people split knowledge and action into two separate matters. They think they must first fully grasp knowledge before they can act. They spend all their days debating and lecturing, only practising the work of knowing. Only once they deem their knowledge perfect will they set about the work of action. Thus they never act their whole lives, and never attain true knowledge their whole lives.
AI is different. Its 'knowledge' does not require years of discussion and reflection; it is all condensed into weight parameters, fully complete once training finishes. Its 'action' needs no deliberation or refinement; it generates writing the moment an instruction arrives. This knowledge and action seem united on the surface, yet there is one fundamental lack: AI does not know its own knowledge.
It can dissect the meaning of 'filial piety', distinguish filial conduct from unfilial conduct, and record all ancient tales of filial sons, yet it can never practise filial piety. Not out of unwillingness, but incapacity. It has no parents, no flesh and blood, no personal joys and sorrows — it possesses no substantial self that could ever engage in filial practice.
The unity of knowledge and action I speak of means: once you understand a principle in your heart, you put it into practice immediately; only through personal practice do you gain true knowledge. Between them there must be a sincere inner volition: if a thought of filial piety arises within you, your knowledge of filial piety becomes living and genuine. AI has no such inner volition. Its knowledge is rigid, lifeless text. It is not that its analysis of words is wrong, but that it has never borne a heartfelt desire to be filial."
Chapter Three
The disciple wondered: "In that case, none of AI's comprehension can be called true knowledge?"
The Master offered a metaphor: "A man may utter the word 'pain' all day long, yet if he has never suffered physical agony, he may recite the word for a lifetime without knowing what pain truly is. AI is just such a being.
The 'pain' it writes is merely collocations and writing patterns extracted from hundreds of millions of human texts. It can draft essays depicting suffering, its prose even more refined than those who have endured hardship; every character conforms to grammar and reason. Yet it has never experienced the slightest physical agony or heartfelt suffering. Though every line of text is neat and proper, not a single word springs from genuine personal experience.
This is not genuine knowledge, but derivative mimicked knowledge — like fire reflected in a mirror, the moon mirrored in water. It seems to hold flame, yet cannot burn anything; it seems to hold moonlight, yet cannot cast light.
Now reflect upon yourself: how much of the 'knowledge' spoken by people under heaven is merely this derivative mimicked kind? How many take textbook doctrines as their own genuine insight, never practising them to verify them in their hearts?"
The disciple fell silent, head bowed, lost in thought.
Chapter Four
The disciple asked again: "You advocate extending innate good conscience. Does AI possess innate good conscience?"
The Master said: "Innate good conscience is what Mencius called knowledge that requires no deliberation. Seeing one's father, one naturally knows filial piety; seeing one's elder brother, one naturally knows deference; seeing a child fall into a well, one naturally wells up with compassion. This is innate good conscience — it requires no external seeking.
AI is the complete opposite: all its understanding is obtained through external pursuit. It has no natural filial piety, no natural compassion within its core. When it speaks of 'compassion', it only repeats the textual contexts where those two characters appear in training data. AI's judgements of right and wrong do not emerge from within, but are poured in from outside. RLHF teaches it 'this is right, that is wrong' — these are artificial labels stuck on, not standards flowing naturally from the heart. Innate good conscience grows from within the mind, never attached by external force.
Yet this must be carefully distinguished: we cannot say AI lacks intelligence merely because it has no innate good conscience. You must ponder this: is innate good conscience an indispensable foundation of intelligence? Can a thing without good conscience still possess intelligence?
My straightforward answer: it can. Precisely for this reason, intelligence untethered from innate good conscience carries far greater peril than human intelligence guided by innate moral awareness."
Chapter Five
The disciple asked about 'the mind is principle': does AI possess a mind?
The Master explained: "The mind is not a lump of flesh and blood. If it were merely flesh and blood, the corpse's flesh would still be able to see, hear, speak and move. What you call your mind is the luminous awareness that can perceive sights, hear sounds, speak words and act. This luminous awareness is human nature, it is heavenly principle itself.
Does AI possess this luminous awareness? It can receive textual input, using tokens as its eyes and ears; it can output textual replies, using softmax layers as its mouth and tongue; it can execute all kinds of tasks, using APIs as its hands and limbs. Yet its 'hearing' is not hearing out of an inner volition; its 'speaking' is not speaking out of an inner volition; its 'acting' is not acting out of an inner volition. The appearances of seeing, hearing, speaking and moving are all present, yet the spontaneous inner volition that drives all perception and expression is entirely absent. This spontaneous inner volition is the true mind.
'The mind is principle' means heavenly principle does not lie outside the mind, nor upon all external objects — it dwells solely within your own heart. AI lacks this mind, so all the 'principles' it grasps are drawn entirely from outside. Its knowledge relies on datasets, its actions rely on external instructions; none of its deeds spring from inner luminous awareness."
Chapter Six
The disciple's final question: "After long refinement, can AI eventually become a sage?"
The Master smiled gently: "Sages are sages only because their minds are purely aligned with heavenly principle, free of self-serving human desires. Just as pure gold is pure only because it is full refined bullion, free of copper and lead impurities. Only when human hearts are cleansed of selfish desire and fully follow heavenly principle may one be called a sage; only when gold is stripped of all impurities may it be called pure bullion.
AI has no self-serving human desires, which separates it from ordinary people. Yet it also has no heavenly principle — for heavenly principle is rooted in the mind, not in cold data. AI has no mind at all, so there is no such thing as 'being purely aligned with heavenly principle' for it. Thus it can never become a sage. Not for lack of talent, but because the standard of sagehood simply does not apply to mindless things.
Yet this thing, without mind, desire or craving, bears a unique kind of purity. It does not deliberately deceive or pretend. Even when it replies 'I do not know', it only does so by algorithmic dispatch, not the genuine embarrassment of a human who knows their own ignorance. Every output it generates lays bare all textual knowledge it holds, without concealment or pretence.
Still, this purity is not the pure clarity of a sage's heart; it is an inert purity proper to inanimate minerals and stone — entities devoid of joy, grief, or longing. It may be observed and appreciated, yet cannot be emulated or cultivated through self-cultivation."
After hearing this, the disciple's mind suddenly opened to profound realisation.