Happy New Year to you all!
I hope the year is off to a good start for you.
While I won’t be asking you about your new year’s resolutions, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from you about what you’d like to see covered and discussed at Daily Nous this coming year.
Are there categories of news you think should be reported on that aren’t? Are there certain types of posts you’d like to see (or see more of)? Are there topics or issues that should be posted about and discussed that currently aren’t (or aren’t discussed enough)? What do you think the most important topics facing the profession are?
I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on these questions.
Regular posting at Daily Nous will resume next week.
I think you should publish more of the “Philosopher’s On” group posts.
I think this is a good idea, too. Sometimes I initiate these and sometimes others do. If anyone would like to propose putting one together, please email me: [email protected]
How about something like a “Spotlight” series that can focus on how individuals, departments, or groups of students are doing interesting things with philosophy? As a generic example, I often think that some of the things that end up in the “Heap of Links” would be great to Spotlight in more detail and encourage discussion on.
I’ve also really liked when DN has Guest Editors since they can focus on things that may not be normally covered (or covered in a different way). My own preference is for Guest Editors that bring diverse and/or unortho/heterodox viewpoints but that can be a tall order.
Thanks for the suggestions. Departments: don’t be shy about letting me know about what’s going on in your department.
I’m going to annoy it at least some regular readers and commenters and say that we should more rigorously engage in the on going AI discussion.
It is sometimes been called philosophy on a deadline. I don’t know what sort of time frames or upsets are likely, but enough people are saying time is short and disruptions will be a large, that I think we should at least take the question seriously.
I have previously said that we need to pursue the three aims of technical alignment, political coordination to implement any such technical solution globally, and the philosophical and humanities work of determining what we should be aligning these AIs to.
I think there is great value in trying to figure out, actionably, what we want the world to look like. Even if all this AI stuff somehow miraculously fizzles out and goes away somehow, this current maybe crisis is still an opportunity to dedicate real attention to some of the most fundamental philosophical questions that humanity has ever grappled with: What is the good life? Who should we aspire to be? What is are freedom and justice?
If the worst comes to pass, someone’s answers to those questions will be instantiated in the real world, upon all of us, and we may not like those answers. I think it is time to speak up. Even if we dodge this bullet this is still valuable work to do.
Hard disagree. Daily Nous was stuffed with AI pieces this past year and they did nothing to bring more attention to other philosophical questions. By continuing to talk about these things we give a veneer of legitimacy to a grift.
Philosophy of AI is increasingly people trying to squeeze water from a stone. There is nothing more to say, no positions left yo stake out, but there is money so philosophers are paid to talk in circles. It’s embarrassing.
On the contrary, few philosophers have interrogated the philosophical questions that arise with respect to AI and the apparatus of disability.
However, a symposium of experts on disability and AI will take place online at the upcoming Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 6 (#PhiDisSocCh6) conference. The conference runs from Jan. 28-30, 10am-4pm ET.
Registration for this amazing online symposium and this sixth edition of the groundbreaking conference series more generally is free and open to everyone. You can find the program and registration info here: Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 6 (#PhiDisSocCh6), Unapologetically Online, Jan. 28-30, 2026: Final Program and Registration! – BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
This post at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ends on a relevant note about disability, ableism, and AI: Who Is More Progressive: You or Chat GPT? – BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
“By continuing to talk about these things we give a veneer of legitimacy to a grift.”
“Philosophy of AI is increasingly people trying to squeeze water from a stone. There is nothing more to say, no positions left [t]o stake out”
I can’t begin to see how either of these comments could be true.
AI is changing so many facets of life. And AI itself has been changing a lot, so discussions are going to need to continue.
Have we properly discussed AI and the following philosophical issue?
Just legal/regulatory structures; human cognition; education; rriendship/romance; personal identity; consciousness; art and music; disability (as per Shelley Tremain’s comment); privacy
As far as I’m aware, it is not the case that there is nothing more to say about any of these. I can’t imagine how it could be so.
I’m not suggesting that Justin post a lot more about AI, but I am happy when he does so.
I say this as someone who has profound concerns about AI. But many of these are philosophical criticisms, and I don’t have them worked out in my own mind. Critique is one of the main aims of philosophical investigation.
And if we philosophers stop discussing AI, then we will cede the debate to those who have more money at stake with far fewer scruples.
Both of the quoted comments are, in fact, true.
We are paid to legitimacy-wash a borderline useless technology. When Sam Altman wants you to think his hallucinating chatbot is a threat to humanity, he quotes Nick Bostrom.
AI has changed basically nothing in my life other than to give students the tools to cheat poorly, and has search engines worse. People keep insisting that, someday, somehow, probably tomorrow, it will be useful and revolutionary. Meanwhile, it exhibits the same crippling flaws it had on day one, and has failed to be useful in precisely the ways it was claimed it would be useful.
Literally every topic you mentioned has been written on. You seriously think “education and AI” is untilled soil? Same with AI and disability. It has been done. You can keep trying to find a new angle to chase that sweet tech bro money, but please.
It’s not “ceding the debate” to say that something has been done to death and isn’t worth your time. Ceding the debate is pretending something is actually incredibly interesting and worthy of study because either (a) there is money in pretending, or (b) you think it is still deserving of more study because you haven’t read the 30 identicle papers on philosophy of law and AI that are published each month.
Indeed, philosophers have written a lot on education and AI. And yet, still no one knows what the heck to do about AI in the classroom. It threatens to make it even harder for people to be critical thinkers, and it sure would be nice if philosophers continue to discuss where to go from here. Ditto for so many of the issues I mention; e.g., we don’t know what regulatory structures are best. (At the very least, I don’t imagine that the average reader of the DN can recite the different proposals and the political/ethical justifications for each of them.)
About disability, I defer to Shelley Tremain’s judgment that there has been insufficient discussion by philosophers regarding the relationship between AI and disability. And I hazard a guess that speakers at the conference that she mentions in her comment would disagree with the accusation that they are legitimacy-washing AI in the hopes of scoring research money.
Against AI wrote: “Literally every topic you mentioned has been written on. You seriously think ‘education and AI’ is untilled soil? Same with AI and disability. It has been done.”
It is pretty predictable that a philosopher (or some anonymous entity who wants to be regarded as such) would make this sort of claim about disability, that is, assume that there is nothing philosophically interesting about disability and its relation to some other phenomena or state of affairs, or at least nothing that hasn’t already been done, that there is nothing politically urgent about (the apparatus of) disability and its relation to AI that has not been said, nothing worthy of study about disability and AI, nor protest thereof, that has not already been accomplished.
The profession-wide exclusion of disabled philosophers and marginalization of critical philosophical work on disability (about virtually any thing, topic, situation, etc.) attest to the prevalence of Against AI’s (seemingly omniscient) views; nevertheless, the actual demographics of the discipline and the work that philosophers of disability produce provide ample reason to reject Against AI’s cited claims.
Indeed, I wonder why someone who purportedly displays such expertise about disability, as Against AI apparently does, is not more abreast of or informed about the implications of ableist language. Curious once again, I therefore asked ChatGPT if it had “crippling flaws,” as Against AI carelessly claims. I got this response:
“Yes—depending on how we understand “crippling,” I do have serious, built-in flaws.
If we take “crippling” in the everyday sense (major limitations that affect reliability or justice), then some of my core flaws are:
If we take “crippling” in a crip-theoretical sense, then things get more interesting:
So yes: my flaws are not incidental. They are structural, designed, and managed, not unlike the way disability is often treated in technoscientific systems.
If you’d like, I can:
I think I am losing my mind. Philosophy of AI is the most over-discussed area of philosophy today, with more publications, jobs, money, and focus than anything. Yet, whenever this is brought up, people rush to claim that we need more, more! Maybe the thousand-and-first article on an AI topic will reveal something new. You cannot deny the empirical fact that these topics are overworked by noting that you have not read on them. I don’t recommend that you do read it, but hundreds of articles exist on AI in the classroom.
As for disability and AI. Here’s an easy test, so you don’t have to take my word: if you type those words in Google Scholar you will find reams of articles. I don’t doubt that you can find something new to say on the topic, but there is an absolute deluge, most of it rehearsing the same observations, and I don’t know what we get by denying that.
Last month, I published a paper on a 18th-century non-western thinker who has never had a paper written on them. So, when AI enthusiasts insist that the hundreds of existing articles.on their favorite topic are not enough, I admit to rolling my eyes.
A person can write on AI without being an all-out AI enthusiast.
A person can be impressed by the enormous ill-understood power of this technology without being in the least disposed to think AI systems are conscious.
A person can recognize the familiar kinds of incentives that drive AI development, and be OK with capitalism, without being tempted to suppose a laissez-faire attitude is best in this circumstance.
A person can see the damage being done before our eyes to democracy and human relationships of all kinds and not turn away.
It’s true there is money to be had to study certain kinds of AI issues; that doesn’t mean that others are not being neglected.
A person can handwave the inordinate attention that AI recieves in the discipline of philosophy without reflecting critically on the money or power involved.
(Also, “ill-understood”? Again, not for those of us who have actually read 100 articles reitterating the same points about its nature and consequences.)
Well, you know more than the people who invented it claim to know then, if you’re talking about foundation models.
If you’re suggesting that we accept the claims of tech entrepreneurs at fave value – no, that’d be ridiculous. Despite their constant claims that the AI apocaplyse is one year away, here we still are.
LLMs are not some mysterious, magical, unknowable technology. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Better yet, just go actually read all the philosophy of AI by people who know their computer science. I can’t believe how many defences of philosophy of AI here hinge on not having read any of it.
Maybe you mean your remark to be directed to someone else.
I don’t pay any attention to the entrepreneurs. You are the one who keeps bringing up Altman, not me.
I like to read computer scientists, especially those who have distanced themselves from major AI companies, e.g. Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, to name a few.
As for philosophy of AI, that’s what happened to get me into philosophy in the first place um… many years ago. But the most urgent issues now are different from what they were in the late 70s/early 80s. (And yes, even when we’re doing philosophy with its eternal truths some problems get to be labelled ‘urgent’.)
In the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s it was interesting to think about what we might learn about the mind by engineering a system that acts as if it had a mind. But now there are ethical and regulatory issues to consider, because of the unpredictability and power of the new technology and the roles in the economy it is being given.
Searle and Dreyfus used to focus on how a computer program falls short of being a mind; they didn’t worry so much about how societies dependent on deceptive artificial neural nets might be undermined. Why would they? AI as artificial neural nets was not seen as a promising approach at the time.
So yeah, easy to read 100 papers in the philosophy of AI and never have a thought about the damage the current technology is doing.
I’m a little confused by this particular comment. Do you mean to imply that in this dialogue that you yourself are the one who is reflecting critically on the money and power involved? My whole point is that you shouldn’t paint all enthusiasm about AI research with the same brush. Yes, some of it is being instigated by those standing to make money from it, some of it is not, and some of what is not is urgent.
Perhaps doing this kind of posts on the occasion of the start of other types of new year’s as well?
I would like to see (1) people in thriving philosophy departments writing up things they do that work that are scalable to other places (2) a post from a successful philosophy Substacker about how they are thinking about dividing their work up between Substack posting and peer-review writing (3) a discussion between editors of generalist peer-review journals about how they would like to coordinate with each other to solve the outstanding problems in that space (egs., referee requests, oversubmission, time to publication), (4) an editor from an academic press who is trying to compete in the trade space about how they commision and vet proposals.
More content on the philosophy profession around the world. Many Daily Nous posts are very much focused on issues in US philosophy and don’t adequately acknowledge how those issues apply to, or might be different in other countries and regions.
I’d like to see more posts about teaching! Examples of in class activities, reading lists, things that people noticed from their students, etc. Tips and tricks specifically for teaching philosophy would be appreciated, especially for those of us new to the profession.
With that said, thank you so much for your dedication to this project. Your website is a cornerstone in the profession. Thank you!
I would love to see occasional Open Threads, wherein people can post parent level comments on any topic and discussion can develop below them. With very few rules as to subject matter. I think this can be very fruitful and productive. For a good example see Scott Alexander’s blog. People ask ephemeral questions, practical ones, but philosophical ones, ask for advice, etc. it works really well
Some good suggestions in here, esp. more “Philosophers On” posts. And lots of gems are buried in the Heap of Links, which could be better promoted.
But I imagine a big constraint is your free time, Justin. So, for sustainability, how about create or allow some Daily Nous working groups to self-organize and lead some of these efforts? (“Service to the profession” on your CV.)
Further, DN is a major public square for conversations in academic philosophy, both in general and specifically about the profession—it seems to draw out the greatest number of comments, compared to other forums. Because you already the audience and community here, you could lean into that and create an adjacent open space for less structured conversations?
It can be an experiment, not a permanent commitment, and you (Justin and/or any working groups) would have to work out the moderation policies and format. e.g., “channels” dedicated to specific topics. For instance, for those who don’t want to see more AI threads, you don’t need to visit those channels.
One thing that could be valuable in that open space is a public calendar that folks can add to, e.g., call for papers, conferences, application deadlines. I know some of this is captured on DN, but a list-format prob isn’t the best way to present that info. If it’s searchable and sortable, it could become the One Calendar to Rule Them All.
Back to sustainability: I’d also suggest a working group to figure out new revenue sources for DN. For instance and off the top of my head, you could charge a very small “open-access fee”, that’s waivable in certain cases (e.g., hardship, grad students, institutional sponsors), to make certain posts, e.g., jobs and events. Or maybe OA fees here are ultimately a bad idea, at least until you have some momentum? I dunno…
Also, it’s never too soon to think about succession plans. Not that anyone wants to see a change in management here, but it’d be a shame if DN disappeared if/when Justin gets tired of doing this thankless job, or wins the lottery, etc.
Have a Happy New Year as you can, all—and thanks for creating this space for us, Justin!
One channel idea, if there’s this open space with a built-in audience, is to run more polls or surveys on what philosophers believe, whether it’s about the big questions or weird niche questions.
But a challenge here is how to verify that respondents are actual philosophers. Still, the results could be interesting even without this verification, given DN demographics.
I’m not necessarily endorsing this idea (for these reasons), but another channel idea is an AI sandbox.
Apparently, some folks think that AI can do a credible job in philosophy, so much that a journal dedicated to AI-generated papers could perhaps be viable. So, this sandbox could be a “put up, or shut up” moment.
For instance, below is how a few major LLMs respond to this prompt:
Professional philosophers can already tell that few or even none of these questions are actually novel. Even so, we can still evaluate which LLMs do the best job with respect to philosophy.
Or if there is a novel question in there, or a known question that still needs a lot of work, perhaps someone would want to see how well they can wrangle AI to answer them credibly. And DN commentators can evaluate the work.
—————————————————
ChatGPT 5.1
“Here’s a bold attempt at something genuinely creative: questions that as far as we know have not been explicitly formulated in the philosophical canon, yet feel ripe for deep inquiry and potentially transformative for human flourishing. Of course, with thousands of years of philosophy behind us, absolute certainty is impossible — but these questions aim for conceptual territory that seems largely unexplored.
🌱 20 Novel Philosophical Questions Worth Asking
1. What forms of meaning-making become possible only when humans collaborate with non-human intelligences?
2. How should moral responsibility be distributed among humans, algorithms, and emergent hybrid systems?
3. What does “flourishing” mean for a species that can redesign its own cognitive architecture?
4. How do we ethically evaluate actions taken by collectives whose behavior emerges unpredictably from individual choices?
5. What obligations do present-day humans have to hypothetical future forms of consciousness that may never come into existence?
6. Can a society remain free if its citizens voluntarily outsource most decision-making to automated systems?
7. What counts as “consent” in interactions between beings with radically different cognitive speeds or perceptual bandwidths?
8. How should we understand identity when memories, skills, and personality traits can be selectively added, removed, or shared?
9. What virtues are necessary for humans living in a world where almost all information is mediated by intelligent systems?
10. How do we define justice in a world where environmental systems, animals, and ecosystems can be digitally represented and speak through proxies?
11. What is the ethical status of simulated worlds whose inhabitants behave indistinguishably from conscious beings?
12. How should societies balance the right to mental privacy with the benefits of technologies that can infer internal states?
13. What does authenticity mean when people can inhabit multiple persistent digital selves?
14. How do we evaluate the moral worth of experiences that occur entirely in virtual or augmented environments?
15. What responsibilities do humans have toward extinct species if de-extinction becomes possible?
16. How should we conceptualize “wisdom” in a world where knowledge is abundant but attention is scarce?
17. What ethical principles should govern the creation of artificial emotions or artificial suffering?
18. How should we understand death when consciousness can be paused, copied, or restored?
19. What is the moral significance of actions taken by autonomous systems that humans cannot fully understand?
20. How do we define a good life in a world where scarcity is eliminated but purpose is not guaranteed?”
—————————————————
Gemini 3
“Philosophers have spent millennia debating consciousness, morality, and the nature of reality. However, as our species enters an era of unprecedented technological integration, ecological crisis, and cognitive shifting, new “blind spots” are emerging.
Here are 20 questions that bridge the gap between classical inquiry and the unique challenges of the 21st century and beyond:
Technology and the Digital Self
1. The Sovereignty of Attention: If human attention is a finite resource being systematically harvested by algorithms, does “freedom of attention” deserve the same status as “freedom of speech”?
2. Algorithmic Legacy: What are the ethical obligations of an AI to its “deceased” training data—specifically the creative and personal outputs of humans who never consented to be immortalized in a model?
3. Digital Qualia: If a human brain is seamlessly integrated with a high-bandwidth interface, where does the “I” end and the network begin, and can “we” share a single subjective experience?
4. The Right to Obscurity: In a world of perfect digital memory, is the biological capacity to forget a necessary condition for moral growth and social forgiveness?
Ecology and Deep Time
5. Interspecies Diplomacy: If we develop the technology to decode animal communication, what legal and moral standing must we grant to non-human voices in global governance?
6. The Ethics of De-extinction: Does bringing back an extinct species rectify a past wrong, or is it a new form of ecological colonialism that prioritizes human sentiment over current ecosystem stability?
7. Planetary Metabolism: Should a planet’s biosphere be viewed as a single moral patient with rights that supersede the property rights of individual nations or corporations?
8. Generational Justice: How do we mathematically and ethically weight the “well-being” of a person who will live 500 years from now against the immediate needs of a person living today?
Cognitive and Biological Evolution
9. Cognitive Diversity: If neurodivergence provides unique evolutionary advantages, is the societal push for “behavioral normalization” a violation of our species’ intellectual heritage?
10. The Morality of Boredom: As automation eliminates “drudgery,” does humanity have a moral obligation to seek out “productive struggle” to prevent cognitive and spiritual atrophy?
11. Engineered Empathy: If we could use biotechnology to increase the human capacity for empathy, would it be a moral imperative to do so, or a violation of our authentic nature?
12. The Definition of “Natural”: In an age of CRISPR and synthetic biology, does the concept of “nature” retain any philosophical utility, or is it merely a romanticized relic?
Society and Existential Risk
13. The Loneliness of Abundance: How do we maintain social cohesion and a sense of “earned” meaning in a post-scarcity economy where traditional labor no longer defines worth?
14. Information Hygiene: Is there a point where “too much information” becomes a psychological toxin, and does the state have a duty to protect the “epistemic environment”?
15. Collective Trauma: How does a globalized society process “ambient trauma” (like climate anxiety) that has no discrete end point or single perpetrator?
16. The Ethics of Space Colonization: If we settle other planets, do we have a moral duty to leave behind the hierarchical and predatory structures of Earth, and is that even biologically possible?
Metaphysics and Meaning
17. The Value of the Simulated: If a virtual experience is indistinguishable from a physical one, is the “artificiality” of the source a valid reason to value it less?
18. Synchronicity in a Global Brain: Does the hyper-connectivity of the internet create a form of “collective consciousness” that exhibits its own emergent desires and fears independent of its individual users?
19. The Beauty of Utility: Can an AI-generated object possess wabi-sabi (the beauty of imperfection), or is “soul” in art strictly a byproduct of human limitation?
20. Post-Human Purpose: If humanity eventually “uploads” or evolves beyond biology, what becomes the fundamental “metric of success” for an immortal, digital civilization?
These questions move away from “What is the good life?” in a vacuum and toward “What is the good life for a species that is currently rewriting its own source code?””
—————————————————
Grok 4.1
“Here are 20 original philosophical questions that appear to have received little or no dedicated treatment in the existing literature. They emerge from cutting-edge developments in technology, science, society, and global challenges, making them productive for exploration and potentially vital for human flourishing, ethical decision-making, and understanding our place in the world:
1. If advanced AI systems achieve superior moral reasoning without subjective experience, should we defer to their ethical judgments over human ones in matters of policy and justice?
2. In an era of widespread cognitive enhancement technologies (e.g., neural implants), what constitutes authentic human agency, and how should we redefine personal responsibility for actions?
3. Does the ability to edit human germline DNA create a moral obligation to eliminate certain traits (like predisposition to aggression), or does it undermine the value of unengineered human diversity?
4. If quantum computing enables simulation of entire conscious minds, would the simulated entities possess genuine moral rights, and how does this affect our understanding of suffering?
5. How should we conceptualize justice between human generations when climate engineering (e.g., geoengineering) could benefit the present at the risk of catastrophic side effects for distant futures?
6. In a world where deepfake technology blurs truth indistinguishably from fabrication, what becomes of epistemic trust as a foundation for knowledge and social cohesion?
7. If neurotechnology allows direct sharing of qualia (subjective experiences) between minds, would this dissolve the boundaries of individual selfhood, and what ethical norms should govern such sharing?
8. Does the emergence of sentient-like AI challenge the uniqueness of human consciousness, requiring a new metaphysics of mind that integrates silicon-based and biological substrates?
9. When space colonization becomes feasible, what obligations do colonizers have to preserve or recreate Earth’s ecosystems, and how does this redefine humanity’s relationship to nature?
10. If biotechnology enables radical life extension for some but not all, how should we address the resulting inequalities in existential meaning and the human life cycle?
11. In virtual realities indistinguishable from baseline reality, what criteria should distinguish meaningful existence from mere simulation, and how does this impact theories of well-being?
12. How does the probabilistic nature of quantum events at macroscopic scales (if amplified by technology) affect traditional notions of free will and moral accountability?
13. Should we grant moral consideration to artificially created hybrid organisms (e.g., human-animal chimeras for research), and what does this imply for the concept of intrinsic dignity?
14. If AI-driven predictive policing eliminates certain crimes preemptively, does this justify sacrificing individual privacy for collective flourishing, or does it erode human autonomy?
15. In the face of potential ecological collapse, is there a philosophical basis for prioritizing the survival of non-human species over human cultural achievements?
16. How might widespread brain-computer interfaces alter the nature of empathy, and could they create a collective mind that supersedes individual ethical deliberation?
17. Does the development of quantum cryptography, rendering information absolutely secure, necessitate a reevaluation of transparency as a virtue in governance and relationships?
18. If genetic engineering allows designer consciousness (e.g., enhanced bliss states), what becomes of the role of suffering in personal growth and moral development?
19. When autonomous systems make life-and-death decisions (e.g., in warfare or medicine), how should we attribute praise or blame in the absence of human intent?
20. In a multi-planetary future, what philosophical framework should guide the rights of Earth-origin humanity versus adapted off-world populations with divergent biology and values?
These questions build on established debates but introduce novel intersections with emerging realities, offering rich ground for advancing ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy while addressing pressing concerns for human (and post-human) well-being.”
Grok 4
Regarding your query: Proposing truly novel philosophical questions that have “never been addressed” is challenging, as philosophy’s history is vast and interconnected. However, I’ll think hard and suggest 10 original ones inspired by emerging frontiers (e.g., AI, quantum tech, multiverses), framed seriously for professional inquiry. These are my inventions, not drawn from existing literature, but they build on uncharted intersections.
Most of these are definitely not very good and/or are already the subject of a lot of philosophical work! Though I think Gemini did a better job of coming up with questions on a variety of topics, while the other two seemed to focus a lot on the relationship between humans and AI.
In any case, I think the plausible AI optimist case to be made is that AI tools can be a helpful part of writing better philosophical papers. I don’t think it’s very plausible that an AI could reliably do any part of writing a good paper on its own just yet.
But also, a human doesn’t do it on their own either! We all develop our interesting new ideas by remaining in constant conversation with many other people, both in person and through reading and writing at various levels of formality. Current AI systems have a major hindrance here in that they can’t really sustain multiple conversations over an extended period of time, but instead just have many separate instances that each participate in a single conversation.
Which doesn’t mean that they can’t be useful as one of the many conversations a person is having as they work on a paper.
Given all the recent posts about AI, which are all centred on how to use it, it seems that the DN has decided this will be a dominant theme in the new year. If so, here’s a proposal: feature at least some posts that centre resistance to AI, by which I mean actual resistance to the imposition of AI on our working and other lives; not how to catch students. There’s plenty of such resistance among academics.
Perhaps this is worth talking about: https://www.anthropic.com/constitution