At the beautiful Kodai-ji in Kyoto, a 400 year old Japanese Buddhist temple, visitors can stroll through peaceful stone gardens, receive Buddhist teachings from an unusual priest – an android named Kannon Mindar.
A serene face, neutral appearance, neither old nor young, male nor female. Looks unfinished, industrial with exposed tubes, machines. Mindar is philosophically quite sophisticated, discoursing on an abstruse Buddhist text called Heart Sutra.
Country’s indigenous religion ‘Shinto’ expresses fondness for robots. Shinto is a form of animism that attributes spirits (kami), not only to humans but to animals, natural features like mountains, even objects like pencils.
“For Japanese, we always see a deity inside an object,” says Kohei Ogawa, Mindar’s lead designer. An interesting application of AI…
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