Tenzin Priyadarshi

Tenzin Priyadarshi is a Buddhist monk, ethicist, and educator who has taught at MIT for over two decades. In 2009 he founded the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and he has advised institutions and technologists on how to build compassion and human values into powerful systems.

Ethics at the design stage

Priyadarshi co-founded the Ethics and Governance of AI Fund, a consortium linking MIT, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, and nonprofits to steer AI development toward the public good. His argument is that ethics should not be an afterthought bolted on to finished products but a design constraint present from the beginning — and he is blunt that much of what passes for it is theater.

Drawing on contemplative practice, he distinguishes intelligence from wisdom — a system can classify data without any actualised understanding — and warns that reducing everything to metrics “can do violence to the spiritual landscape.” His posture is engaged and reformist rather than oppositional.