technology
TagDoes Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s
Has your department instituted an AI policy? If so, whom does it govern, and what does it say? What should such a policy say? (more…)
Philosophy, Brain Studies, and the Value of Curiosity
An op-ed about curiosity published in the New York Times yesterday will resonate with many philosophers. (more…)
The Philosophy Job Market Deepfake (guest post)
Have you heard? AI companies are hiring philosophers! (more…)
Philosophers Working in or with AI Firms & Organizations (updated)
(Originally published on March 17th, 2026.)
To what extent has the development of AI over the past several years led to non-academic work for academically-trained philosophers? (more…)
Writing Together: A Teaching Experiment (guest post)
“I’m very fond of the take-home essay, as there’s something irreplaceable about the experience of articulating a theory over the course of multiple weeks—doing background research, letting the ideas marinate in one’s subconsciousness, and chiseling away at the draft until every word is perfectly placed.” (more…)
A New Tool for Curbing AI Cheating (guest post)
“The aim is not to keep everything exactly as it was before gen AI took off. That would be both impossible and undesirable. The aim is to preserve the parts of philosophical education that are still worth preserving while changing the surrounding infrastructure enough to make that possible.” (more…)
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…)
The Market for Scholar Replicas
Why should a department hire some fresh PhD when it could instead hire Derek Parfit, Daniel Dennett, Judy Thomson, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Barcan Marcus, or David Lewis? (more…)
Grieving What AI Has Taken from Learning
“I wonder if these people have ever seen a student’s face when they finally understand something for the first time.” (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…)
Major Grant Awarded for Work on the Philosophy of Neurotechnology
Four philosophers are leading an interdisciplinary team spanning the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford that has received a £1 million grant from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) to study the philosophy of neurotechnology. (more…)
Shortcuts to the End of the University? (updated)
“It’s not just the problem of brazen cheating. In some ways, the more insidious threat LLMs pose to undergraduate learning is the promise of instant shortcuts.” (more…)
Influential Ideas in an AI Era
A philosopher often praised for the accessibility of his writing, when asked about it (he often took part in advice sessions for younger academics), would say that he is not writing for today, but for the future. (more…)
Anthropic’s Statement on the Department of War’s Demands
Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, earlier this week ordered Anthropic, the company that makes Claude artificial intelligence products, to allow the Department of War unrestricted use of Claude. Anthropic is resisting, saying that certain restrictions on Claude’s use are necessary to protect “democratic values”. (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…)
Have Pen, Laptop, and ChatGPT, Will Publish (guest post)
How, as a researcher, can you use AI tools like ChatGPT in a way that doesn’t compromise your integrity, creativity, and independence? (more…)
When You and Your Students Write the Book of Your Course (guest post)
Some people have the ability to look at a mess and see the makings of something beautiful. (more…)
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 not wait for philosophers and cognitive scientists to agree on what constitutes machine consciousness… There are pressing ethical issues we must face now.” (more…)
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 of us, about how it might want to be designed.” (more…)
Grading Prompts to Measure Student Learning (guest post)
In this era of AI, “can we still rely on take-home writing assignments to assess student learning? And, should we allow students to use ChatGPT in order to complete such assignments? My answer to both questions is ‘yes’.” (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…)
What Will It Be Like To Be An Academic In Ten Years?
Many of you reading these words are young or middle-aged academics. Many of you envision yourselves continuing to work or starting careers in academia. (more…)
GPT-5’s Ethics Guidelines for Using It in Philosophical Research
In a post last month, we discussed the question, “How much use of AI in our research is acceptable?” (more…)
Intent Amplified: Teaching Students How to Learn with Artificial Intelligence
“You can choose to use AI to learn, or you can choose to use AI to avoid learning.” (more…)
The Ethics of Using AI in Philosophical Research
“How much use of AI in our research is acceptable?”
(more…)