主修哲學人仕的反擊（1/3）

Recently The New York Times reported the following:

The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors (1/3)

A.I. labs are hiring contrarian, chin-stroking, finger-steepling sages. Who’s underemployed now?

The NYT - By Benjamin Wallace - A version of this article appears in print on July 5, 2026, Section BU, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Hire Deep Thinkers for A.I. Research? It’s a No-Brainer

July 5, 2026

Updated 9:25 a.m. ET

Growing up in Georgia, Robert Long was given to pondering big questions and the meaning of life — before he was 10, he doubted his own free will. But it wasn’t until college, where he majored in social studies, that he learned he could think about consciousness full time. He read a book by Douglas Hofstadter called “I Am a Strange Loop,” which explored mysteries such as What is a self? “I didn’t even realize that those were questions you could ask,” he says, “and then that there were philosophical disciplines about them.”

When Mr. Long entered graduate school at New York University, to study the philosophy of mind, it was with a conventional ambition. “I was very much on the path of publishing in journals, go on the job market, get a job at a university,” he said. When a fellow philosophy Ph.D. candidate told him that she was going to an obscure nonprofit called OpenAI to work on artificial intelligence policy, “I was like, that’s kind of random.”

But Mr. Long, too, found his philosophical interests trending toward A.I. His dissertation was titled “Essays on the Philosophy of Machine Learning.” And he moved to San Francisco to pursue postdoctoral research in early 2023, just when ChatGPT was blowing up. As the new large language models began displaying uncannily humanlike behaviors, he awoke to the dawning significance of potentially conscious A.I. — and to the possibility that something professionally interesting might happen if he stuck around.

Trying to rigorously answer fundamental questions is kind of the whole point of philosophy, and Mr. Long and Jeff Sebo, an N.Y.U. philosopher who specializes in animal welfare, soon collaborated to write “Taking A.I. Welfare Seriously,” a paper arguing that it was important to avoid harming A.I. systems if they “matter morally,” and also important not to care for systems if they don’t. Later, with funding from three foundations aligned with the Effective Altruism movement, Mr. Long and a colleague set up a nonprofit, Eleos AI Research. Of his drift from academic philosophy into the A.I. start-up ecosystem, Mr. Long says, “I sort of got, like, frog-boiled.”

“So, I think I’m going to major in philosophy” is the kind of undergraduate statement that for decades has terrorized tuition-burdened parents, inspiring dark visions of basement-dwelling offspring who fail to launch. Diogenes the Cynic lived in a clay jar. Baruch Spinoza ground lenses to pay the bills. Friedrich Nietzsche survived on the kindness of family and friends. The idea that a philosophy degree is a ticket to a lifetime of underemployment persists. When Google DeepMind announced in April that it was hiring someone whose actual business-card title would be “Philosopher,” the memes flowed. “It’s so the A.I. can learn what it feels like to have a college degree and still be unemployed,” someone posted on X. Of philosophy majors’ job precarity, a Redditor contributed: “Half are pulling espresso shots while silently debating whether the customer who ordered oat milk truly exists.”

But Mr. Long’s trajectory and Google’s new hire were in keeping with a quietly building trend: A.I. labs, and the related nonprofits around them, have been recruiting workers as versed in Consequentialism and John Stuart Mill as in neural networks and reinforcement learning. While a plain-vanilla philosophy degree remains as hard to monetize as ever, David Chalmers, a prominent philosopher of consciousness at N.Y.U., observes: “I think the demand for philosophers with A.I. training is, if anything, outstripping the supply right now. It’s an area I encourage students to go into. I think these issues with A.I. will be front and center for a good while.”

One of humanity’s oldest disciplines and one of its newest inventions feel distinctly made for each other. A.I. presents a fresh way for philosophers to ask ancient questions, and its own set of new ones that they are uniquely trained to engage with: of truth and belief and knowledge (epistemologists); of reasoning (logicians); of mind and consciousness (philosophers of mind and consciousness). For ethicists, in particular, A.I. is a bonanza. How should models act toward us? How should humans interact with them? Where would purpose come from in a post-work society?

“When you look at A.I. and think seriously about it, the philosophical questions just abound,” says Iason Gabriel, an Oxford-trained philosopher who joined Google DeepMind in 2017 and now leads its Artificial General Intelligence and Society team. “They’re almost everywhere.”

Thus it was that, as the sun set over San Francisco Bay on a recent Thursday, Mr. Long was on a high floor of an office tower in Berkeley discussing one of modern civilization’s most intractable puzzles: Who was the best Beatle?

(to be continued by part two)

Translation

主修哲學人仕的反擊（1/3）

人工智能實驗室正在招募那些有反向思考、摸下巴沉思、雙手十指尖相接信心地提意見的智者。現在誰才是失業者？

Robert Long在喬治亞州長大，從小就喜歡思考人生大事和人生意義 - 不到10歲，他就開始懷疑自己的自由意志。但直到大學主修社會學後，他才意識到自己可以全心全意思考意識問題。他讀了Douglas Hofstadter的《我是一個奇異的循環》（I Am a Strange Loop）一書，書中探討了諸如 “什麼是自我？” 之類的謎題。 他說:“我以前甚至都沒意識到這些問題是可以提出的”，“更沒想到還有專門研究這些問題的哲學學科。”

Long 先生進入紐約大學攻讀心靈哲學研究生時，懷抱著一個傳統的抱負。 他說:「我當時一心想著在期刊上發表文章，然後找份工作，在大學任職」。當一位哲學博士生同學告訴他，她要去一家名為OpenAI的鮮為人知的非營利組織從事人工智能政策方面的工作時，“我的第一個反應是：這真是出乎意料。”

但 Long 先生也發現自己的哲學興趣逐漸轉向了人工智能。他的博士論文題目是《機器學習哲學論文集》。 2023年初，他搬到舊金山從事博士後研究，當時ChatGPT正處於爆發式增長期。隨著新型大型語言模(LLM)開始展現出驚人的類人行為，他意識到潛在意識人工智能的重要性，以及如果繼續深耕這一領域，或許能取得一些有趣的職業成就。

嚴謹地解答根本性問題正是哲學的核心所在。Long先生與專攻動物福利的紐約大學哲學家Jeff Sebo很快就合作撰寫了《認真對待人工智能的福祉》（Taking A.I. Welfare Seriously）一文。該文指出，如果人工智能系統 “具有道德意義” ，那麼避免傷害它們至關重要；反之，如果它們不具有道德意義，那麼也不應該關心它們。後來，在三個與有效利他主義運動相契合的基金會的資助下，Long 先生與一位同事成立了非營利組織 Eleos AI Research。至於他從學術哲學轉向人工智能領域的創業生態系統，朗先生說:” 我在不知不覺就被捲入其中。”

「所以，我想我會主修哲學」這種本科生宣言，幾十年來一直讓那些背負沉重學費負擔的家長們憂心忡忡，讓他們不禁擔憂自己的孩子最終只能待在地下室，一事無成。犬儒學派(Cynic) 的Diogenes居住在一個大陶罐裡。Baruch Spinoza靠著研磨透鏡維持生計。Friedrich Nietzsche 靠家人和朋友的接濟度日。哲學學位注定終身就業不足的觀念依然根深蒂固。今年四月，GoogleDeepMind宣佈將招募一位名片上印著「哲學家」頭銜的人，這一消息迅速引發了網路幽默諷刺。 有人在X論壇平台上發文說:「這樣人工智能就能體會到擁有大學學位卻依然失業的滋味了」。一位Reddit用戶就主修哲學學生工作不穩定性的問題評論道： “一半的人一邊默默地製作濃縮咖啡，一邊思考點燕麥奶的顧客是否真的存在。”

但Long的職業軌跡和谷歌的新聘用都符合一個悄然興起的趨勢：人工智能實驗室及其相關的非營利組織一直正在尋找的員工不僅要精通神經網路和強化學習等人工智能技術，還要精通後果主義 (Consequentialism) 和 約翰·史超域·密爾 (John Stuart Mill) 的思想。儘管普通的哲學學位一如過往仍然難以賺取金錢，但紐約大學著名的意識哲學家 David Chalmers 指出： “我認為，目前對接受過人工智能訓練的哲學家的需求，甚至可以說是遠遠超過了供給。我鼓勵學生們投身於這個領域。我認為與人工智能相關的問題將在未來很長一段時間內成為關注的焦點。”

人類最古老的學科之一和最新的發明之一，似乎天生就是彼此的結合。人工智能為哲學家提供了一種全新的方式來探討古老的問題，同時也帶來了一系列全新的問題，而哲學家們恰好具備處理這些問題的獨特能力：關於真理、信念和知識（即認識論者）；關於推理（即邏輯學家）；關於心靈和意識（即心靈與意識哲學家）。尤其對於倫理學家而言，人工智能更是一次巨大的機會。模型該如何對待我們？人類又該如何與它們互動？在後工作時代，人生的意義將從何而來？

牛津大學哲學家 Iason Gabriel 說:「當你認真審視人工智能時，你會發現哲學問題真是多到不得了」。他於2017年加入 GoogleDeepMind，目前領導通用人工智能與社會團隊。 “它們幾乎無處不在。”

就是如此，在最近的一個星期四，當夕陽西下，映照著舊金山灣，Long 先生在 Berkeley一座辦公大樓的高層，與人探討著現代文明最棘手的難題之一：誰是披頭四中最棒的成員？

（待續）

Note:

1. Effective Altruism (EA) (有效利他主義) is an intellectual and philanthropic movement that asks a simple question: “How can we use our time, money, and careers to do the greatest amount of good?" It began in the early 2010s and has become especially influential in parts of the U.S. technology, academic, and AI communities. The core idea is that, unlike traditional charity, Effective Altruism emphasizes using evidence and careful reasoning to determine which actions help the most. (ChatGPT)

2. The paper entitled “Taking A.I. Welfare Seriously” 《認真對待人工智能的福祉》basically argues that there is enough uncertainty about future AI consciousness that we should begin preparing now for the possibility that some AI systems could have morally significant experiences. The paper also suggests that even though we do not know whether future AI systems will be conscious, there is a sufficiently plausible possibility that some may become morally significant, so society should begin researching AI consciousness and preparing ethical guidelines now to avoid accidentally causing large-scale moral harm to A.I. systems. (Chat GPT)

3. Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BCE and the most famous representative of Cynicism (犬儒學派). Rather than writing elaborate philosophical treatises, he turned his life into a public demonstration of his ideas, advocating radical simplicity, self-sufficiency, and freedom from social convention. His influence extended far beyond his lifetime, helping shape later philosophical traditions, especially Stoicism (ChatGPT)

4. A post-work society (後工作時代) is a hypothetical future society in which most people no longer need to work to earn a living, usually because technology—especially artificial intelligence and robots—does most of the work.