Artificial intelligence is threatening job prospects for many people. But not, it seems, students of philosophy.<\/p>\n
Figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York earlier this year showed American philosophy graduates are more likely to be employed than their peers who studied computer science. It prompted The Economist magazine to suggest coders picked the wrong career since \u201cthere seems to be no shortage of work for philosophers of AI<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n The cause of the boom is twofold. AI companies are trying to train their chatbots to weed out hallucinations or missteps in reasoning \u2013 and who better to teach them than experts in logic. AI companies are also trying to train their products to think, or act, ethically \u2013 a pressing need as AI gains power.<\/p>\n But can philosophy make AI ethical?<\/p>\n No, it cannot, \u201cin the same way philosophy cannot make anyone ethical\u201d, says Ois\u00edn Keohane, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can teach philosophy to anyone and they may still grow up to be a monster; and monsters, as a rule, are not swayed by arguments. That isn\u2019t a special failure of the discipline. It is what moral education has always been like.\u201d<\/p>\n However, philosophy can change how AI systems \u201cbehave\u201d, he says. It can influence chatbot developers who are making important moral choices. \u201cRefusing to be in the room doesn\u2019t make those choices better; it makes them less examined.\u201d<\/p>\n Keohane, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, is in the midst of a campaign against the proposed suspension of the philosophy programme at the University of Dundee \u2013 he has a petition going: savedundeephilosophy.org<\/a>. The interest from Big Tech in philosophy can only help his cause. Conveniently too, a key figure in Anthropic\u2019s \u201cpersonality alignment team\u201d is Amanda Askell, a Dundee philosophy graduate, who is trying to develop ethical guardrails for the company\u2019s chatbot Claude.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Computer-generated corners? Robot caddies? As sport embraces AI, nothing is ridiculousOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Keohane believes philosophers should work with Big Tech. But, he says, those sceptical about collaboration were handed \u201ctheir best evidence yet\u201d with the departure from OpenAI of Chlo\u00e9 Bakalar, its head of ethics. OpenAI \u2013 maker of ChatGPT \u2013 has not refilled the role but claimed<\/a> last week \u201cethical considerations are deeply embedded\u201d in its work.<\/p>\n Time will tell if Anthropic is any more interested in ethics than its rivals. Or whether it\u2019s just a ruse, as the company prepares to go public under a potential $2 trillion valuation.<\/p>\n The key question for those training AI is whose ethics to use? Attention has focused on two of the three major schools of morality. The first is deontology, or rule-based ethics. This determines what\u2019s right or wrong based on a moral principle or law. For example: \u201cNever lie.\u201d<\/p>\n The second is consequentialism. This encompasses a broad range of theories that judge what\u2019s right or wrong based on outcomes. For example: \u201cIt\u2019s okay to lie if the benefits outweigh the costs.\u201d <\/p>\n The third school of morality is virtue theory. It locates right and wrong in the development of moral character or demonstrating virtues like compassion, humility and bravery. For example: \u201cTell the truth even if it means putting yourself in harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though it is the oldest concept in moral philosophy, virtue is almost entirely ignored in AI ethics research. There\u2019s a practical reason: it\u2019s less obviously transferable into code. Consequentialism, in contrast, syncs nicely with data analytics. But also the ethical concepts used by AI reflect the values of AI\u2019s owners. Capitalism is utilitarian by nature and AI\u2019s funders want a return on their investment. Virtue is for losers, as the notoriously unhumble Donald Trump might put it.<\/p>\n