AI in the Philosophy Job Market (guest post)

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a reporter working on a story about the extent to which AI, as a topic of research and an area of specialization demanded by employers, was becoming dominant in philosophy. Here’s one thing I said to her: People should be cautious when inferring how much philosophy of AI work is actually happening from how much philosophy of AI work they’re hearing about. AI is relatively new and highly socially significant, and so work on philosophy of AI is bound to get attention, and its novelty means it is likely to be more memorable when thinking about the state of philosophy more generally. Since AI and philosophy is establishing itself as a subdisciplinary field, there is a fair amount of hiring in it, forming research groups of scholars studying it, creating specialist journals for writing about it, establishing prizes to recognize good work in it, and so on. People will hear about these developments, as they’re newsworthy in the profession, but a lot of this activity is just “catch-up,” as AI and philosophy comes to be on a par with other areas of applied philosophy, such as bioethics. Those were my general impressions. But what would be more useful were hard numbers related to how AI is shaping the academic job market. For that, I turned to Charles Lassiter, professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University. Over the years, Professor Lassiter has generously produced many data-based analyses of the philosophy job market published here at Daily Nous, and so I asked if he could look at the growth of AI in philosophy. Once again, he has come through. His analysis is below. Thanks, Charlie! (A version of this post is also at Professor Lassiter’s site.) AI in the Philosophy Job Market by Charles Lassiter Reactions to AI in academia, the humanities, and philosophy, have been mixed. Anecdotally, some of my friends and colleagues think this is the beginning of the end. It’s not that AI is going to take our jobs as philosophers or humanists; rather, inquiry into the history and values of humanity will slowly be edged out because AI can get us those answers faster and more reliably. But some other of.. The post AI in the Philosophy Job Market (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.