Category: technology
-
New Study on AI’s Philosophical Skills
Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and adjunct professor at Stanford University (whose projects have included Waymo, Google X, Google Street View, and more)…
-
An Open Letter from Academics about AI Risk / Life Without the Internet & the Case for Non-Network Redundancy
There has been an increase in concern over AI destroying humanity, most recently spurred by tweets from former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon about how…
-
Testing AI’s Philosophical Writing with a Contest
A pair of philosophers have launched a contest in which participants submit essays that are “primarily AI-generated”. The aim of the competition is to…
-
Careful with those Accusations
Academia is in turmoil regarding partially or wholly AI-written research. AI-written work is being submitted to journals, but it isn’t clear how much. Publisher,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Is Artificial General Intelligence Here?
“For the first time in human history, we are no longer alone in the space of general intelligence.”
-
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…
-
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…
-
Even Conscientious Students in Their Favorite Courses…
In a philosophy seminar—“my favorite class I’ve taken so far,” she said—Gwen used AI to write almost all her essays just to avoid late…
-
Which AI’s Might be Conscious, and Why it Matters (guest post)
Large language models like ChatGPT are not conscious, but there are other “serious contenders for AI consciousness that exist today” Furthermore, “AI development will…
-
AI Development and Consciousness
“The system which is now beginning to design its successor is also increasingly self-aware and therefore will surely eventually be prone to thinking, independently…
-
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…
-
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.”
-
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…
-
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…