technology

When There’s no Fun in Funding: External Research Money, Ethics-Washing, and Positive Academic Freedom (guest post)

Governments and firms are turning to philosophers and other scholars more and more in regard to the ethics of developing and regulating technology. Yet this engagement with ethics may be superficial, careless, or even manipulative—and the ethicists involved may not even be in a position to realize this. (more…)

Philosopher to Head Australian Government’s AI Safety Institute

Kate Conroy, a philosopher who has held various positions in academia, government, and industry, has been chosen to lead the recently established Australian AI Safety Institute, part of the Australian government’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources. (more…)

New AI Model Has a Taste for Philosophy

The AI firm Anthropic recently shared a detailed description of the various capabilities and safety risks of Claude Mythos Preview, a new AI model (Anthropic’s “most capable frontier model to date”). (more…)

An AI Analyzes Philosophers’ Discussion of AI

Last week I posted about PhilLit, a new AI research tool for philosophers that finds and summarizes philosophical writing. The post generated a lot of comments, which prompted one reader to run a little experiment. (more…)

Can AI Write a Useful Philosophical Literature Review? (guest post)

A pair of philosophers have developed a new research tool that uses AI to provide comprehensive and reliable philosophical literature reviews, and they’d like you to give it a try. (more…)

Is Artificial General Intelligence Here?

“For the first time in human history, we are no longer alone in the space of general intelligence.” (more…)

Are Current Events Making Their Way Into Your Classroom? How?

Though philosophers are often (if not quite accurately) thought to have been asking the same questions for thousands of years, philosophers throughout history have responded in their work to the circumstances of their day. (more…)

Building an AI’s Moral Character (updated)

UPDATE (1/22/26): I’ve reposted this today because Anthropic recently released an official version of what was referred to earlier as Claude’s “soul document.” Anthropic is now calling it Claude’s “Constitution”, and you can see it all here. There appear to be some new elements to it, but I haven’t had time to look it over carefully; readers are welcome to point out..

Beyond Authorship Vibes: Preserving Judgment and Trust in the Age of AI (guest post)

Artificial intelligence is an amazing technology, but also one that seems to pose threats to human relations, to aspects of human flourishing, and to education. (more…)

Editor of Ethics Floats AI-Use Guidelines

In a recent editorial, Douglas Portmore (Notre Dame), the editor-in-chief of Ethics, sets forth some “initial guidelines” about AI use for the journal. (more…)

Best Next Moves: How Philosophers Can Make Good Use of Theory-Driven GPTs (guest post)

We’ve talked previously about some of the various tasks that philosophers might have large language models help them with in their work, mainly focusing on the ethics of doing so. But what about the mechanics of doing so? (more…)

AI and the Ecological Accomplishment of Literacy

“While contemporary discussions often focus on what we read or how we teach reading, the deeper truth is that literacy itself is an astonishingly fragile achievement.” (more…)

Philosophers and Anthropic’s Claude

A philosophy professor writes in sharing some news about the “character” and “well-being” of Anthropic’s LLM, Claude, noting how philosophers have been involved with recent developments.

The following is from an email from Gus Skorburg, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph:

I wanted to share some stuff related to Anthropic’s Claude mode..

AI Firm: “Start Cheating”

“Start cheating. Because when everyone does, no one is.” (more…)

Professors, How Are You Using AI in Your Day to Day Work?

More outside of academia than within it, one hears things like “in a few years saying ‘I don’t use AI’ will sound as weird as someone today saying ‘I don’t use the internet,'” or “if you’re not using AI, you’re missing out and wasting time.” (more…)

California State University System to Become “AI-Powered”

The Chancellor of the California State University (CSU) system has announced that its 23 universities will become “AI-powered.” (more…)

DeepThinking To Some Purpose (guest post)

“Real thinking isn’t about the grammatical structure of a sentence but about the mental state of being curious, puzzled, and actively seeking understanding.” (more…)

“Gpt could easily get a PhD on any philosophical topic”

“If you do it right, talking with Gpt is like talking with someone who’s seriously studied and thought hard about philosophy. Gpt could easily get a PhD on any philosophical topic. More than that, I’ve had many philosophical discussions with professional philosophers that were much less philosophical than my recent chats with Gpt.” (more…)

A New Tool to Track and Analyze Philosophers’ Mentions (guest post)

Philosophers have always referred to other philosophers in their writing, but not always with citations. (more…)

When Publishers Want to License Your Book to Generative AI Firms (updated)

Is it part of your book contract that your publisher may license your book to the makers of ChatGPT or other large language models or forms of generative AI? If given the choice, should you go along with it?

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This App May Indicate Something Is Deeply Wrong with Us

But what? (more…)

AI As History of Philosophy Tool

How would Aristotle have responded to Newcomb’s problem? What would John Locke have thought about end-user license agreements? What objection would Immanuel Kant raise to your novel reconstruction of one of his arguments? (more…)

OpenAI Has Kept Secret an Accurate ChatGPT Detector for Two Years

According to The Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper” but hasn’t released it yet, despite concerns about widespread student cheating on assignments with it, as well as other illicit uses. (more…)

New AI Venture Focuses on Mathematical Reasoning

Of possible interest to philosophers working in logic and philosophy of math, as well as anyone curious about the reasoning abilities of artificial intelligence is a new model from Harmonic called “Aristotle”. (more…)

Two Philosophers Bring Expert-Based AI to Your Reading Experience

John Kaag (University of Massachusetts, Lowell) and Clancy Martin (University of Missouri, Kansas City) have teamed up with businessman and philosophy enthusiast John Dubuque to create a new business that brings together great books, expert commentary, and artificial intelligence. (more…)