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Advocating for Tech Firms to Hire Philosophers

I have spent the better half of the last two years trying to convince companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, DeepMind, and OpenAI that they need to hire philosophers. (more…)

Philosophers Win €17.9 Million Grant for Study of the Ethics of Disruptive Technologies

A project on the ethics of socially disruptive technologies, led by Philip Brey, professor of philosophy of technology at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente and scientific director of the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, has received a €17.9 million (approximately $19.6 million) grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Scien..

New Open Access Text On Probability & Decision

Jonathan Weisberg, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, has created a new open-access book on probability and decision-making. It has the brilliant title Odds & Ends. (more…)

Philosopher-Created Research and Productivity Software for Philosophers

Jason Winning, who worked developing commercial database software for medical professionals before recently earning a Ph.D. in philosophy and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, has created a free, open source “personal productivity/database application” designed to be especially useful to philosophers. (more…)

Philanthropy for Philosophy: Fleeting Fad or Fertile Future?

“Are we on the cusp of a philosophy giving golden age?”

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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..

Philosophers Appointed To High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence

The European Commission (EC), which proposes and administers European Union (EU) law and policy, has created a new High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the aim of which is to advise on the crafting and implementation of the EU’s strategy on artificial intelligence. (more…)

Ubermess: Philosophers Discuss the Self-Driving Car Crash

On March 19, 2018 a self-driving Uber car-for-hire struck and killed a pedestrian, Elaine Herzberg, in Tempe, Arizona. This was not the first trouble Uber has had with its self-driving cars, nor was it the first fatal crash involving a self-driving car (for example). (more…)

Philosopher to Chair Board Advising UK Parliament Commission on Technology Ethics

Member of Parliament Darren Jones has announced the creation of a Parliamentary Commission on Technology Ethics run by him and fellow MP Lee Rowley. The Commission will work with an advisory board chaired by Luciano Floridi, Oll’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at Oxford University. (more…)

A Game for Gaining Logical Fluency

Matthias Jenny, who recently received his PhD in philosophy from MIT, has started working in the tech industry. He wrote to share with Daily Nous readers a game he created to help people develop basic logical fluency. (more…)

Emergent Horrors (?) of Information Technology

These videos, wherever they are made, however they come to be made, and whatever their conscious intention (i.e. to accumulate ad revenue) are feeding upon a system which was consciously intended to show videos to children for profit. The unconsciously-generated, emergent outcomes of that are all over the place… (more…)

The Growth of Pre-College Philosophy In Ireland

This past year, nearly 60 high schools in Ireland began offering philosophy courses or introducing philosophy modules into existing courses, and the nation’s president, Michael Higgins, launched the Young Philosopher Awards for primary and secondary school students. (more…)

Computer Science Ethics: A Growth Area for Philosophy?

An increasing number of universities across the country are beginning to offer courses in “computer science ethics,” The New York Times reports.

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Philosophy In A World Of Mass Deception

Our current political situation is so horribly distressing that it is easy to lose sight of even more horrible things that may be on the horizon. (more…)

Laptops in Classrooms Revisited

Nearly two years ago, prompted by a Columbia professor’s decision to ban laptops in his classes, we discussed classroom computer and phone policies. The subject has been gaining more traction recently, owing to recent studies and an op-ed last week in The New York Times by University of Michigan education, public policy, and economics professor Susan Dynarski. (more..

Which Sciences Can Help Answer Philosophical Questions?

Can science help us answer philosophical questions? Hanoch Ben-Yami, professor of philosophy at Central European University (CEU), in an interview at 3:AM Magazine, suggests that the question is too broad. The answers are different for different scientific inquiries. (more…)

Video Interview Do’s & Don’ts

Many departments are turning towards the use of Skype and other forms of video-conferencing for first-round interviews, and such interviews are sometimes among the first times candidates and search committee members have used such technology. Noting this, Professor Mitzi Lee, placement director at the University of Colorado, writes in with a request to discuss some ..

Dennett on Politics, Philosophy, and Post-Modernism

Daniel Dennett (Tufts) is visiting the UK to promote his new book, but most of this interview with The Guardian is about US politics.

Some excerpts, including a bit about how some philosophy might be responsible for our current political predicament: (more…)

Laptops, Tablets, and Phones in the Classroom

I settled on my New Year’s resolution while giving a lecture to 85 masters students. It was one kid who unintentionally suggested the idea. He was sitting in the back row, silently pecking away at his laptop the entire class. At times, he smiled at his screen. But he rarely looked up at me. I had a choice. I could disrupt the class to single him out. Or I could do w..

AI, Go, and Philosophical Argument

After more than four hours of tight play and a rapid-fire endgame, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has won a second contest against grandmaster Lee Sedol, taking a two-games-to-none lead in their historic best-of-five match in downtown Seoul. The surprisingly skillful Google machine, known as AlphaGo, now needs only one more win to claim..

Google Gets Philosopher to Help It Forget

Luciano Floridi (Oxford) has been selected by Google to be a member of an advisory panel to help the company handle requests from European residents asserting their newly acquired legal “right to be forgotten” (also here).

Yik Yak Yuck

Margaret Crouch, a philosophy professor at Eastern Michigan University, was team-teaching a large group of students with two other professors, while, unbeknownst to the three, many of the students were using the class time to post hostile and vulgar remarks about them via Yik Yak. (If you don’t know Yik Yak, think of it as a local anonymous twitter feed in which old..

New App Brings APA Eastern Into 21st Century

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has partnered with Guidebook to make a mobile app for its Eastern Division meeting later this month. The old paper program was clearly the idea of the same sadist who invented books with endnotes; this is clearly an improvement. Download the Guidebook app for your device, enter in the redeem code from your registration em..

Why Not Skype Interview?

Over the past few years more and more philosophy departments are moving to a model of hiring that ditches the interviewing of candidates at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association and replaces them with interviews over Skype or other video-conferencing technology. The case for doing so seems quite strong. It is less expensive for candi..

The Ethics of Driverless Cars

Would you buy a car that would drive you off a cliff, to your death, in order to save the lives of several pedestrians your car would otherwise run over? The world of driverless cars will likely soon be upon us, and with them a number of questions like that and scenarios that make something like this seem simple. Aeon Magazine has a new article from Tom Chatfield on..