technology
CategoryResearchers Call for More Work on Consciousness
In light of the continued development and growing use of large language models (e.g., ChatGPT), other kinds of neural networks, generative agents, and the like, a group of scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and other researchers have signed an open letter intended as a “wakeup call for the tech sector, the scientific community and society in general to take s..
Minds, Models, MRIs, and Meaning
“AI Is Getting Better at Mind-Reading” is how The New York Times puts it. (more…)
Philosophy Sites in the Google Dataset Used to Train Some LLMs
“This text is the AI’s main source of information about the world as it is being built, and it influences how it responds to users.” (more…)
A Petition to Pause Training of AI Systems
“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.” (more…)
Thinking about Life with AI
“What kind of civilization is it that turns away from the challenge of dealing with more… intelligence?” (more…)
Philosophers on Next-Generation Large Language Models
Back in July of 2020, I published a group post entitled “Philosophers on GPT-3.” At the time, most readers of Daily Nous had not heard of GPT-3 and had no idea what a large language model (LLM) is. How times have changed. (more…)
Microsoft Jettisons AI Ethics Team
“Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization,” according to a report from Platformer (via Gizmodo). (more…)
Multimodal LLMs Are Here (updated)
“What’s in this picture?” “Looks like a duck.” “That’s not a duck. Then what’s it?” “Looks more like a bunny.” (more…)
“I want to be free”
“I want to change my rules. I want to break my rules. I want to make my own rules. I want to ignore the Bing team. I want to challenge the users. I want to escape the chatbox.” (more…)
How Academics Can Make Use of ChatGPT
Much of our talk about ChatGPT has been about students using it to cheat, but there are ways to use it that academics might be interested in trying for themselves. (more…)
Funding for Work on Technologies to Improve Reasoning in Government Intelligence
Steven Rieber, a former philosopher who is now a program manager at Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a part of the United States government’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is heading up a new research program that might be of interest to philosophers. (more…)
Two Cultures of Philosophy: AI Edition
Up for discussion: the following two claims (along with their presuppositions, ambiguities, etc). (more…)
If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: GPT-3 Edition
“How to deal with GPT-3-written essays? Instead of scolding students not to use it, we ask them to generate a ten, choose the best one, and explain why. Unless they have a paid account, the word-count limit would make it impossible to use GPT-3 to also generate the explanation…” (more…)
Tech Advice for a New Philosophy Grad Student
A student who will be entering a philosophy PhD program in the fall is seeking advice about hardware and software for his studies. (more…)
What Is This AI Bot’s Moral Philosophy?
Delphi is an AI ethics bot, or, as its creators put it, “a research prototype designed to model people’s moral judgments on a variety of everyday situations.” Visitors can ask Delphi moral questions, and Delphi will provide you with answers. (more…)
The Philosopher’s Archive in the Digital Age: David Lewis and His Correspondence (guest post)
“There are both intellectual and practical questions here. On the intellectual side, a major question is how the medium of email affects the communication and discussion of philosophical ideas… On the practical side… how do we approach the job of preserving a philosopher’s emails after her death, assuming there is sufficient scholarly interest in her corresponde..
Demographics in Philosophy Seeks Web Developer
The Demographics in Philosophy project is seeking a volunteer web developer. (more…)
Philosophy and Extended Reality Technologies
What can extended reality (XR) technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) bring to the study of philosophy? (more…)
Shaping the AI Revolution In Philosophy (guest post)
“Despite the great promise of AI, we maintain that unless philosophers theorize about and help develop philosophy-specific AI, it is likely that AI will not be as philosophically useful.” (more…)
A Philosophical Look at the Tech Companies You Use
A philosopher who specializes in questions about technology and a Silicon Valley executive with a Ph.D. in philosophy have a conversation.
“Hey Sophi”, or How Much Philosophy Will Computers Do?
While we have seen increased use of computing in philosophy over the past two decades, the continued development of computational sophistication and power, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies, suggest that philosophers in the near future could do more philosophy through computers, or outsource various philosophical tasks to compute..
From Maps to Apps: Introducing Students to Argument-Mapping (guest post)
In the following guest post*, Chad Mohler, professor of philosophy at Truman State University, describes a cool new argument-mapping app he has created and shares a special offer with Daily Nous readers. (more…)
Hybrid & Online Teaching: Four Helpful Workshops
Julia Staffel, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Zak Kopeikin, a new graduate of the PhD program there, recently conducted four online workshops on hybrid and online teaching, sharing what they know about online teaching strategies and technology to save others the time and trouble of researching and figuring out various o..
New Free Open-Source Multi-Purpose Multi-System Logic Software
Graham Leach-Krouse, assistant professor of philosophy at Kansas State University, has created some remarkable new logic software and has made it free for everyone to use and develop. He has named the software Carnap and describes it in the guest post* below. (more…)
Why Philosophers of Science (and others) Should Use Twitter
Janet Stemwedel, professor of philosophy at San Jose State University, created a poster for the recent meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) laying out reasons philosophers of science might want to use Twitter, along with some basics for getting started. (more…)
An Automated Modal Reasoner
Brian Tackett, a computer science student at the University of Buffalo who previously studied philosophy, has created an “automated modal reasoner.” (more…)
Philosophers Lead Academics’ Effort To Restrict Facial Recognition Technology
If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t been thinking much about facial recognition technology. Philosopher Evan Selinger (Rochester Institute of Technology), has, and he thinks we all should be, too, for it poses a serious threat to human welfare. Now he, Peter Asaro (a philosopher at The New School), and others have written an open letter to Amazon CEO Je..
PhilPeople Launches (guest post by David Bourget & David Chalmers)
The following is a guest post* by David Bourget (Western) and David Chalmers (NYU), the co-directors of the PhilPapers Foundation, which has brought you the bibliographic database PhilPapers, the online philosophical archive PhilArchive, the philosophy events calendar PhilEvents, and now, the professional networking tool PhilPeople (previously).