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0 pointsthe_af5h ago0 comments

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.

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2 comments · 1 top-level

andy993h ago· 1 in thread

At least in my academic experience, there are academics that are uniquely suited to academia (for better or worse) and there are “academics” that know what to say to be the business version of whatever the discipline is. Neither is necessarily better or worse, but they’re very different and not doing the same thing. Presumably it’s the latter that fit in well with bigco philosophy orgs.

I will say though I went to and taught at lower tier schools, if you’re going to Stanford or whatever it might be so competitive that everyone has already been screened to be the second kind and will do just fine working in industry.

the_afOP2h ago

Interesting! It makes sense, yes, that there are two kinds of philosophers, one more business-savvy than the other. I still think it's wrong-headed to "buy" philosophy in this way, with a business goal, especially of the Silicon Valley kind (because you don't know the answer, and it might very well be that something makes business sense but is "philosophically unsound"). And in any case, it seems like theater to me.

I do picture a modern Machiavelli advising Altman and Amodei ("it's better for AI to be feared than to be loved, so hype away mio signore!"). Not sure it's a nice image though!