Yoga sadhana and AI – Geza Timcak and Gabor Pek
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers new capabilities mainly in industrial areas, but it is increasingly used as a source of information also in many soft areas. It is often conceived as a quick and good source of information that is easy to obtain.
There are, however, an increasing number of caveats in this respect, as AI only reproduces what it can grab from the Internet. If incorrect information or malicious content (‘poisoning’) enters its system, it is difficult to get rid of and human effort is required to correct it. Therefore for an uninformed person AI may provide invalid or misleading information (hallucinations).
Even now there is a tendency to delegate a portion of the portfolio of a yoga teacher to ‘AI Yoga Assistants’ of various types. In the future this could lead to ‘AI yoga teachers’. Such virtual entities however, lack human capabilities and would be the result of an AI superiority claim (‘humans are not good enough’, transhumans are the right choice), which is, however not true, especially if we look at the classic role of yoga teachers (Gurus).
This presentation analyses the definition of sadhana, its pillars and the pros and cons of the coming AI-dominated life. It points out the useful areas and limits of ‘safe’ use of AI and indicates the art of finding a proper and competent yoga teacher for various levels of yoga training. The human guide in yoga is also needed also because yoga sadhana is not a linear process and includes a number of dimensions that cannot be reached by AI.
Geza Timcak started practicing and studying yoga in 1958 and was influenced and taught by a number of Western, Indian and Taiwanese yoga/meditation teachers. He had his first study-visit in India in 1977 and since that time he is doing sadhana in yoga ashrams regularly. He taught yoga since 1975 and got his first formal yoga teacher qualification in 1979. Since 1981 he is also a tutor at Teacher Training Programs. Since 1995 he teaches (together with the Savita yoga team or alone) at EUY events. He led about 500 yoga courses at home and around the world and published about 100 papers and books on yoga. Mail: timcak.gejza@atk.sk
Dr. Gábor Pék PhD. earned his M.Sc. diploma in computer science in 2011 and his Ph.D. in 2015 from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is an Assistant Professor at the CrySyS Lab, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He started practising yoga in 2018 and is developing special sādhanā protocols in cooperation with his mentorsat home and abroad. He is a qualified yoga teacher both in Hungary (Narada Academy) and with the Slovak Yoga Association. Mail: gaborpek@protonmail.com
?
