Fascinating to see it in the process of being readied, before the pilgrims/tourists start pouring in. This is the Qila Rai Pithora, a significant but non-Buddhist historical site; I guess chosen for its convenient location near Malviya Nagar station. How fortunate to have this so close to IITD!

The only known holy relics of the Buddha were excavated at Piprahwa. Some are in the National Museum, but a larger part had been outside India for a long time and were only recently repatriated. Now all those relics are being brought together for the first time, and this is the site chosen for it.

I wasn't saying that no one has thought about these questions; just that they've not had much attention in the 'core' AI community, i.e., the folks driving the current hype around LLMs etc. It seems to me that a lot of the narratives there don't engage with the literature we're discussing here.

And I feel like this might become a growing gap between the AI boosters and the population at large. Is the idea that 'computers are capable of intelligence' a scientific hypothesis to be tested, or an a priori assumption? Somehow in AI over time it seems to have shifted from former to latter.

Unfortunately, within the core AI and machine learning communities I still see relatively little engagement with critical arguments like Searle's, or deeper thought about the conditions under which behavioural emulation/prediction might align with genuine intelligence and understanding.

Perhaps the very powerful intuition Searle had is to imagine machines that *could* pass the Turing test, and show how they might still be seen as mere human mimicry rather than the real deal. With the development of more powerful AI systems, in a way the argument seems to have gained in appeal!

It seems ironic, but my own thinking has moved in a similar direction. Like many AI folks, I used to side with Turing and think that Searle's critique didn't make much sense. But the advent of LLMs which arguably come close to passing the Turing test has made me take Searle more seriously!

This must have been a remarkably prosperous and well-flourishing centre of Buddhism, comparable to the more famous ones in the region at Nagarjunakonda and Amaravati.

It may be convenient for today's powers-that-be, in their mythologising of history, to ignore that question and pretend that all in India was peaceful and golden and heavenly until the Muslims arrived. But the slightest glance at the historical evidence all around us tells a very different tale.

And yet, all trace of Buddhism in this region was lost and forgotten until recent discoveries and excavations. Just as it was in Mathura; or Nalanda; or so many other places in the country. How did that happen?

The recent excavations at Phanigiri have further cemented the evidence that the Krishna river valley region was a hugely flourishing centre of Buddhism during roughly 100 BC to 400 AD, with at least 3 huge known monastic complexes (the other two being the more famous Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda).

Many of the sculptures and inscriptions are remarkably well preserved, apparently because they were deliberately buried under the soft earth to protect them when the monastery was being abandoned, some 1700 years ago! See the limestone slab with the sharp and clear Brahmi inscription, for instance.