Big AI labs are hiring philosophers (opens in new tab)

Hmm I spent a good amount of time in big tech, now work in AI, and I minored in philosophy at Berkeley back in the day (Parmenides, Socrates, Plato etc.)

How do I align myself with such a job?

For those of us who have read Paul Graham's submarine essay, should the last paragraph be a giveaway? The "AI theoretician's" quote seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the article.

is there a link available that allows us to actually read the article?

We couldn't possibly be in a bubble.

Strangely, I found that LLMs responds better to philosophical explanations alongside instructions when writing code than simple imperative tasks of "do this". For example, if you tell a frontier model "This is the feature I'm trying to implement, and this is the problem I intend to solve with it and the reasoning behind it.", you usually get a lot more reliable results that both pass tests as well as function as you intended, even if your spec isn't as detailed overall.

AI Lab: Say "I am conscious"

LLM: "I am conscious"

Philosopher (Paid by AI Lab): "It is conscious"

>Dr Floridi describes the scale of departures from philosophy departments as a “haemorrhaging”.

I wonder if anyone who is connected with actual academic philosophy can comment on this. I'm pretty skeptical.

This is a field where it is notoriously hard to get a real academic position, I would bet there is no shortage of people for these roles.

This is interesting. Until autumn of 2024, when the company was subsumed into a better-heeled AI-VFX concern, I worked for probably the best-known and earliest all-AI VFX house, whose ethics department was headed by a philosopher, though the company struggled to place him to practical advantage.

The only comment I can make on the general trend is that it's apparently good PR for cash-saturated startups. Ultimately what AI 'means' is certainly not the business of those making it (who are arguably least-qualified to comment); and insider insights offer no benefit that I can discern.

Well that PR is cheaper than buying Johnny Ives for $6 billion. You could probably buy an entire Ivy League philosophy department for 60 million.

How much longer until they start hiring the token high school drop out whiz kid, or are they completely skipping that this time around?

Given the the labs are trying to create [super] human-like consciousness, partly through the guidance of huge system prompts, and many philosophers are experts in textual descriptions of consciousness it makes sense

I suppose they should. That seems like the right, or at least a related, discipline for some of the questions raised by ai developments. But i cannot help but feel completely unenthusiastic about the idea of the AI labs controlling the narrative around societal impact of AI.

I'm highly anticipating the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything

On a more serious note, I found this interesting from TFA:

> The biggest question, though, is what sorts of rules should be put in those constitutions in the first place. Philosophers have zeroed in on two main ethical frameworks. One is deontology. Popular with Kant, among others, this imposes strict rules that prohibit things like lying, coercion and treating people as a means rather than an end, even if it is for a greater good. Anthropic’s constitution incorporates many deontological strictures. These can make AI behaviour more consistent, says Dr Powers—a plus for deploying robots in homes and public spaces.

> The other approach to ethics of interest to philosophers of AI is called consequentialism. It weighs costs against benefits to decide what to do. Models more sympathetic to consequentialism include OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Google’s AI models are designed to produce “likely overall benefits [that] substantially outweigh the foreseeable risks”, a classic consequentialist goal.

As a big fan of the trolley problem thought experiment, I am very curious what led to this ethical split between these model makers. I find it darkly humorous and also scary to think about the choices these models could make to influence people and decisions, especially if it's under a utilitarian perspective

I wonder what it is they feel LLMs can’t do for them and they need a human for? I’d like to see the spec, like are they expecting the philosophers to use Claude all day, maybe in a philosophy harness and will be judged by their token use? Or have they isolated to high value philosophy task that they’ll work on without using AI? I think it would be interesting to contrast with developers and understand how vs philosophers they are seen differently. How much of philosophy is boilerplate vs original thinking and how does it compare to writing software?

Some say that much of modern philosophy is simply wordplay with limited actual content... which is exactly what LLMs are great at.

When they should have hired mathematicians!

It'll be funny when AI will embody human philosophy better than us.

Maybe George Gilder is available. No PhD but lots of hands-on experience.

I wonder if they're trying to recruit Yuk Hui

I don't buy the article's title "Why big AI labs are hiring so many philosophers". They probably just hire one or two, and hundreds of software engineers.

I always found it somewhat annoying that a philosophy study would present itself by stating that graduated philosophers have great job opportunities, implying that studying philosophy would not be a bad choice. It just attracts really smart people, and these tend to find a job more easily. This article seems to make the same kind of mistake.

Also, for all we know these imagined herds of philosophers at AI firms are just labelling pictures of dogs.

I think it's in search of AGI (artificial general intelligence).

philosophy should be the output, not the input

Damn, I dropped out of my philosophy undergrad -- 30 years ago last month -- to join the .com insanity. Wrong turn?

What strikes me as funny is this notion of hiring academic philosophers to work in the machinery of startups and businesses, "money (and coffee, presumably) in, philosophy out".

The kind of "philosophy" the article mentions is school-level and common knowledge, hopefully they don't need to hire anyone to learn about e.g. the Socratic method (their own LLMs will happily regurgitate it). Are they truly hoping to "buy philosophy" or have scholars "do philosophy" for their AI systems? Do these entrepreneurs even understand what philosophy is? I guess Silicon Valley really is doomed to rediscover (and misunderstand) the wheel again and again.

In any case, if I were a philosopher, I wouldn't count on this. This kind of jobs are very likely to fall prey to layoffs, and even worse if their "philosophizing" produces conclusions their employers don't like. I still remember when one of the FAANG (Google?) fired their head of AI ethics because they didn't like what she was saying. I think she may have been a bit abrasive, but really, philosophy isn't a product and if they are going to corral how philosophers think or communicate, it's not going to work.

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Edit: from TFA:

> TEN YEARS ago, as the AI revolution was gathering pace, arts and humanities students were told that, if they wanted to make themselves employable, they should “learn to code”. That may have been bad advice

More like made-up advice. Never heard of it. It's true it was often said (way before 10 years ago) that it was hard to find employment in the humanities, but really, who adviced them to "learn to code"? The (dumb) learn to code movement was not targeted specifically at them. Sometimes it seems to me articles get written in bizarro world.

my comment from 12 yrs ago came true lol

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517186

take that top responder

> From philosophy? Are you kidding? There's simply no way AI is ever going to come from a bunch of people arguing over what is "qualia" and what is "consciousness

I think, therefore I am seeking 2.5m total comp

It is going to be a big problem for humanity when the superintelligent AIs start telling us that our political philosophies, to which everyone is deeply and emotionally attached, are total garbage.

One obvious example is: we have a bizarre and anomalous belief that political union has a special moral status unlike other relationships (marital, financial, social, etc). In all other cases, relationships require consent from both parties, and it is monstrous to use force to compel a relationship. If we applied this logic to political relationships, we would immediately conclude that unilateral secession is a sacred right. But no one is ready to bite that bullet.

https://unifixion.substack.com/p/the-anomalous-ethics-of-pol...