From AI to Conditioned Existence
The term prompt–response comes from the design of modern AI systems. Large language models generate text as responses to prompts, shaped by their training and retrieval bases.
This mechanism, though recent in technology, echoes a much older principle in Buddhist thought: pratītya-samutpāda, or conditioned co-production. Every experience arises in dependence on conditions: “this being, that becomes.”
By taking prompt–response as a perspective, we can recognise a shared grammar across domains:
- In AI, fluency emerges from prompt-driven continuation.
- In human minds, feeling prompts craving, craving prompts grasping, and the cycle of becoming unfolds.
- In physics, particles and processes can be seen as responses within fields of constraint.
The essay that follows develops this perspective. It suggests that freedom lies not in breaking the cycle of prompt and response, but in recognising it — and in the recognition, opening a gap where awareness and compassion become possible.