Big AI labs are hiring philosophers

The same effect can be observed if you've ever been a software developer where you're told what solution to build without any of the context of the problem you're solving. "We need an FTP server, quick, ops, get on that." leading into "Oh, it turns out the customer didn't need that to receive our emails" leading to a bunch of very puzzled devops.

Yeah lol. That definitely does not sound like philosophy. Giving a "why" you want to implement a feature and make particular changes will help the AI stay on track much better than if it is driving blind. It can't make choices without understanding what the desired outcome is.

I would say it is definitely a form of context, but when people think of LLM context windows in terms of coding is more technical context related: "what has been done before, what's the coding task at hand." etc.

However, I think that there is a philosophical portion to that context as well: "What problem is this feature supposed to help with? How would you verify that passing unit tests means that the code is working as intended? Does this feature need to exist at all?" LLMs usually need these to be provided to them explicitly since they are not good at inferring the correct intent compared to humans, otherwise they just make something that looks right but doesn't work right.

[dead]

Animals (humans included) work on the same "framework" (i.e., the brain), so even if the definition of consciousness is fuzzy, we can rank them in a more or less consistent way. LLMs, on the other hand, are just the linguistic part of a brain without anything else. Whether this is enough to be conscious is up for debate (in my opinion no, but that's irrelevant), but it falls outside the spectrum assumption IMO.

The best part is that you just KNOW this is a documentary film too

Poo poo, pee pee

Most of the replies to this comment are missing the point: consciousness is perhaps not a coherent or evidence-based concept.

^ clearly something an LLM would ask

Since you haven't proven conclusively that you're not a machine, I prefer to decline your kind invitation. I don't owe justification to even most conscious entities, and certainly not to a machine.

You first

“Prove X without using the axioms need to prove X.”

Academia is a pyramid like every organization.

Of course you will have less spots as you go up the ladder.

I agree with the last point, but note that Barbara Fried is a law professor with no philosophical training whatsoever - nevertheless she started writing about the matter and is a published notable of sorts. (This is irrelevant except insofar as the topic was 'trained philosophers')

Moreover, in her book, she claims not to be consequentialist, quite, but had infected her sons:

> Finally, I would like to acknowledge a significant intellectual debt to Joe Bankman and our sons, Sam and Gabe. When Sam was about fourteen, he emerged from his bedroom one evening and said to me, seemingly out of the blue, "What kind of person dismisses an argument they disagree with by labelling it 'the Repugnant Conclusion'?" Clearly, things were not as I, in my impoverished imagination, had assumed them to be in our household. Restless minds were at work making sense of the world around them without any help from me. In the years since, both Sam and Gabe have become take-no-prisoners utilitarians, joining their father in that hardy band. I am not (yet?) a card-carrying member myself, but in countless discussions around the kitchen table, literally and figuratively, about the subject of this book, they have taught me at least as much as I have taught them. More importantly, they have shown me by example the nobility of the ethical principle at the heart of utilitarianism: a commitment to the wellbeing of all people, and to counting each person-alive now or in the future, halfway around the world or next door, known or unknown to us as one.

> This book is for all my boys: Joe, Sam, Gabe, and Matt.

(Needless to say, 'counting everyone as one' doesn't entail consequentialism, nor have most consequentialists had that principle.)

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Facing_Up_to_Scarcity/Q...

I got a BA in Philosophy, before going on to get a MS in CS. Would not change any of it.

What texts and problems are you thinking of under that heading?

Socrates argued if you believe something is evil and powerful people do evil then by definition they are not "powerful" -- they are just "evil". As a corollary, if you believe something is good and the people who do good happen to be the weakest members of society, by definition, they are "powerful" -- it is society that is messed up.

You also communicate with others (not-you). You know that there are others because you can gain knowledge from them, which you didn't have before. And in that knowledge lies awareness of your self and consciousness.