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How reliable is

Norbu the Chatbot?

By Lim Kooi Fong

Lim Kooi Fong has been a student of Buddhism and a Dharma
teacher for more than 30 years. He is the founder of the Buddhist
Channel (www.buddhistchannel.tv), Buddhist Travel (www.
buddhistravel.com), and the Buddhist AI chatbot NORBU (https://
norbu-ai.org). He is also a life member of the Upakara Kalyana Mitta
Buddhist Association (UKMBA) and actively conducts Dharma talks
for Buddhist societies around the Klang Valley in Malaysia. Benny
Liow interviews Kooi Fong about his chatbot Norbu that has created
an unprecedented excitement among members of the Buddhist
community not just in Malaysia but also globally.

Benny: You created Norbu, a chatbot that can Wee Keat, NORBU was born. Incidentally, NORBU
answer questions related to Buddhism. What was stands for “Neural Operator for Responsible Buddhist
your inspiration behind this initiative? Understanding,” which by itself indicates some

intelligent capability.
Kooi Fong: I attended the Global Buddhist Summit
organised by the International Buddhist Confederation With NORBU’s birth I also realised the meaning of the
(IBC) held in New Delhi in April 2023. On the second day, message I took away from HH’s speech, that is, the
HH the Dalai Lama gave a keynote address. His speech Buddha’s teachings are now “available to be asked and
was about 90 minutes and he talked about many things. questioned”, and that “Dharma personalisation for self-
But two key points stuck with me, and that was “We learning” is now possible. These are the hallmark of the
must be grateful to the Nalanda Tradition, for without Nalanda Tradition, which prides itself in the culture of
it, there would be no Tibetan Buddhism today”, and “We debating and questioning validity of Buddhist tenets.
need to bring Nalanda Tradition outside of India”. Also NORBU is now available to Buddhists all over the
world, which technically fulfils HH’s second point.
Now I am a Theravadian Buddhist, and does not really
know much about Vajyrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. A chatbot is a computer program that simulates
Much less Nalanda Tradition. I was really pique why human conversation with an end user, but not all
that 2 points kept on playing in my mind, even after chatbots are equipped with artificial intelligence
coming back to Kuala Lumpur. When I came back, my (AI). Is Norbu a form of AI?
IT friend who supports the Buddhist Channel server
facility offered me to take a look at some “ChatGPT Yes, NORBU is a Language Learning Model (LLM)
source codes” and asked me to “do something with it”. based on Claude 3.5 Sonnet. It is a machine learning
model specialized in comprehending and generating
So with his help, an AI service provider, and two other text, a crucial aspect of natural language processing
Buddhist friends in Bro. Wong Tin Song and Bro. Ng (NLP). Trained on vast amounts of text data, NORBU