To Land a Job in AI, Try Reading Kant
Key takeaways
- Philosophers have never seemed like the most employable bunch.
- At Anthropic, resident philosopher Amanda Askell has become one of the company’s most recognizable faces.
- As philosophers at the labs help to sculpt AI models, producing prominent work cited in hundreds of subsequent research papers, so too is AI shaping the philosophy curricula at eminent universities.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story“It’s probably the best time to be a philosopher since Aristotle was hired as tutor to Alexander the Great,” says Henry Ajder, a philosophy postgraduate who advises the UK government and a slew of startups on artificial intelligence. He’s only half joking.
Philosophers have never seemed like the most employable bunch. But AI, the same technology that’s expected to drive many other people out of work, has given new weight to the kinds of questions they’re trained to ask (and sometimes maybe even answer): What is intelligence? What is a mind? “You have philosophers from hundreds of years ago who thought about some of the same problems,” Ajder says. “Now they are becoming material.”
Two of the foremost AI labs have recruited teams of in-house philosophers. “There are significantly more philosophers now—that’s a sound intuition,” says ethicist Iason Gabriel, who leads Google DeepMind’s team of research scientists specializing in the societal impact of AI. At Anthropic, resident philosopher Amanda Askell has become one of the company’s most recognizable faces. Both labs declined to disclose the number of philosophers they employ, citing company policy. WIRED counts at least 10 at DeepMind and four at Anthropic.