Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by scoofy 516 days ago
I have multiple degrees in philosophy and I have no idea what this article is even trying to say.

If anyone has access to the full article, I’m interested, but it sounds like a lot of buzzwords and not a ton of substance.

The framing of ai through a philosophical lens is obviously interesting, but a lot of the problems addressed in the intro are pretty much irrelevant to the ai-ness of the information.

2 comments

I was about to be very excited that my bachelors in Philosophy might become relevant on its face for once in my life! But, I’m not sure that flexing that professionally is going to get me at the top of any neat AI projects.

But wouldn’t that be great?

Once I'd started a new job and was asked to write "a little bit" about myself for a slide for the first company meeting. There were a couple of these because we were a bunch of new people and my little bit was in a font like half the size of all the others, because I have a humanities degree so I can and will write something when you ask me to.
Philosophy will help you in ways that don't directly get you paid. Ultimately philosophy is the study of how to think.

The number of arguments I've had about "AI" with friends has me facepalming regularly. Understanding why LLMs don't equate to "intelligence" is a direct result of that training. Still admitting that AGI might actually be an algorithm we haven't figured out yet is also a direct result of that training.

Most deep philosophical issue come from axiom consensus (and the lack there of), the reflexive nature between deductive and inductive reasoning, and conceptions of Knowledge and Truth itself.

It's pretty rare that these are pragmatic problems, but occasionally they are relevant.

> Ultimately philosophy is the study of how to think.

That would be (philosophical) logic, which is a branch of philosophy, both as an art (the practice of correct reasoning) and a science (the study of what constitutes correct reasoning). Of course, one's mind is sharped during the proper practice of philosophy, but per se, that is not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim are the most general first principles. For example, metaphysics is concerned with the first principles of being qua being; epistemology with knowledge qua knowledge, and so one.

The article is about mapping Philosophy into AI project management.

> Philosophical perspectives on what AI models should achieve (teleology), what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how AI represents reality (ontology) also shape value creation. Without thoughtful and rigorous cultivation of philosophical insight, organizations will fail to reap superior returns and competitive advantage from their generative and predictive AI investments.

Doesn't that hold for all other applications of software and really technology? Without further context that just seems to be saying you have to, like, think about what the AI is doing and how you're applying it?