Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Philosophy Eats AI

sloanreview.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#21

Post by redelbee »

So we’re back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud!

Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to create a new perfect philosophy that it will then use to direct its “life” from then on? I can’t imagine that would work in any way. It would certainly be entertaining to see the results, however.

That said, AI companies would likely all benefit from a team of philosophers on staff. I imagine most companies would. Thinking deeply and critically has been proven to be enormously valuable to humankind, but it seems to be of dubious value to capital and those who live and die by it.

The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of our time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital - instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy of our time.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#23

Post by XorNot »

redelbee wrote: post #21

So we’re back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud! Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to cre…

What's the philosophy department at the local steel fabricator contributing exactly?

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#24

Post by rapnie »

initramfs wrote: post #10

The world is becoming an algorithm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creepy_Line Algorithms create a compression of search values not unlike a Cartesian plane. The question is, will more people embrace the Cartesian compression of ubiquitous internet communication?

Isn't Nature like algorithms at work?

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#25

Post by apsurd »

XorNot wrote: post #23
redelbee wrote: post #21

So we’re back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud! Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to cre…

What's the philosophy department at the local steel fabricator contributing exactly?

To ponder whether there's any value in doing anything beyond maximizing steel fabrication output.

if it's absurd to you to think that a steel fabrication company should care about anything other than fabricating more steel, well that's your philosophy.

there are other philosophies.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#26

Post by grey-area »

jdietrich wrote: post #11
Sleaker wrote: post #5

I'm confused on the premise that AI is eating software. What does that even mean and what does it look like? AI is software, no?

There are a whole bunch of software problems where "just prompt an LLM" is now a viable solution. Need to analyse some data? You could program a solution, or you could just feed it to ChatGPT with a prompt. Need to build a rough prototype for the front-end of a web app? Again, you could write it yourself, or you could just feed a sketch of the UI and a prompt to an LLM. That might be a dead end, but a lot of people a…

A lot of the same people also recently bet huge amounts of money that blockchains and crypto would replace the world's financial system (and logistics and a hundred other industries).

How did that work out?

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#27

Post by moffers »

scoofy wrote: post #18

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.

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?

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#28

Post by Hammershaft »

redelbee wrote: post #21

So we’re back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud! Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to cre…

> The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of our time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital - instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy of our time.

I'm not blind to when this goes horribly wrong, or when needs go unaddressed because they aren't profitable, but most of the time these interests are unintentionally well aligned.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#29

Post by alganet »

Philosophy is mostly autophagous and self-regulating, I think. It's a debug mode, or something like it.

It's not eating AI. It's "eating" the part of AI that was tuned to disproportionally change the natural balance of philosophy.

Trying to get on top of it is silly. The debug mode is not for sale.

Post reply on HN