When I studied AI and then philosophy in university, pretty much every course prepared me to be annoyingly critical of AI. Sometimes I wish I wasn't aware of any of it.

Ethics, philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of science, aesthetics, history of philosophy, medieval philosophy, logic, philosophy of mind, metaphysics… that's roughly the list of areas my degree covered, plus some machine learning, neuroscience, functional programming and maths (those were not my strengths). For all of these research areas, it's trivial to draw lines to what we make computers do today. In many cases, the subject matter has been studied for for decades, sometimes for millenia.

I'm not really an expert in any of them. Just over four years in a university let me merely scratch the surface. I know where to find more information, roughly who the influential thinkers were and, in some cases, what they believed and how it contrasted with others. I learned not to accept things at face value, to consider perspectives and look for middle grounds.

But it's made me into someone who values the philosophical perspective. Mostly that of others, as, again, I barely scratched the surface. I value the philosophical perspective on the world, specificially on the role of technology in it. It is one that asks questions, carefully considers what's the right course of action, takes into account what actually constitutes knowledge and isn't afraid to go all meta on things.

The philosophical perspective seems daunting to some, but really, it's mostly an attitude. It's like a, method or series of methods, to make sense of things. Reasonably, carefully and evenly.

I find the lense of money much more daunting. I've never ran a multi billion dollar company, so maybe it is lack of familiarity and magnificent naivety… but it seems daunting to me to always try and fit everything into the scope of shareholder value.

The money lense forces one to value things that may not have value. With little room to question that. It's a lense that values hype and pretense over substance, that labels careful consideration as ‘hate’ or ‘blocking innovation’. A lense that brings prosperity, but also makes it really hard to make the downsides go away. Or even talk about them. The money lense avoids inconvenient meta questions.

Philosophers, in pretty much all areas of philosophy, are worth your attention. In general, people from the humanities bring much needed and more wide perspectives. They may not have ready made answers, but they can help ask the interesting questions, and call out inconsistencies.

Personally, I don't know if I'm always able, as it takes some mental toll to be the person in the room pointing out the concerns when others are excited about opportunities. I don't want to be the “hater” or the one “stiffling innovation”. Optimism is better for business, and the sceptical perspective is a needle I, and many others, want to carefully thread. I only scratched the surface, but I wish as technologists, we'd listen to the philosophers more.

---

Originally posted as We should listen to the philosophers more on Hidde's blog.

Reply via email