Philosophy and AI

Philosophy and AI

I think AI will be good for philosophy (if the philosophers don’t ruin it first, a big if). The reason is obvious: AI is no good at philosophy, at least as AI now exists. But it is good at many other things: white-collar jobs, routine teaching, performing calculations, storing information, providing quick answers. It is good at math and science, but not good at philosophy. So, jobs in fields where AI is good will disappear, but philosophers won’t. This is all commonly accepted, more or less. But I think it goes further—into news and entertainment. I think animated newscasters are a distinct possibility, along with robot cameramen and computerized news writers. I’m not sure about comedians (see “The Comeback” on HBO), but I predict that actors are going to be in trouble, especially action stars and leading men and women. For the powers of animation are going to take over their roles (literally). We already see it happening in sci-fi and fantasy films, also pornography. Nature documentaries are on the brink of extinction. AI is just less expensive and more flexible. You won’t even need scriptwriters for the commercial stuff (are there any real writers in Hollywood anymore?). A dumbed-down culture like ours is an AI culture.

But philosophers are not expendable in this way, except for routine teaching. The only question is whether the demand will exist. If universities as we know them succumb to AI, partially or wholly, philosophers will go elsewhere and form companies—so long as there is a demand for them. This is the big question: in an age of AI will people become stupider or will they aspire to something more elevated—difficult, challenging, profound? My suspicion is that they will do the latter: their minds will be less taken up with routine mechanical tasks and freer to roam more widely and deeply. Philosophers will be in demand, treated as valuable commodities. Movie stars will fade away, and TV celebrity pundits, to be replaced by philosophy stars. AI will come to them. I use AI to do my grunt work, but I don’t use it to make progress on philosophical issues, and I never will (not in this lifetime). I envisage a society in the not-too-distant future in which philosophers (good ones anyway—there are plenty of hacks) will be regarded as superstars. Even the architects of AI will lose out to AI, as AI figures out how to manage and create AI. Even in a society dominated by AI, not always benignly, philosophers will still be necessary—and I am really not so sure about scientists, historians, and even athletes. Armies won’t need flesh-and-blood troops (we will have robotic boots-on-the-ground and drones in the air). In an AI world actual organic philosophers will be kings, or at least “Hollywood royalty”. And the underlying reason, in my book, is that we philosophers deal with insoluble problems, while AI deals in soluble problems (problems not mysteries). It will be good for us that our problems can’t be solved.