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This article seems high on vibes, low on metrics. > While a plain-vanilla philosophy degree remains as hard to monetize as ever, David Chalmers, a prominent ph
by em500 3mo ago
This article seems high on vibes, low on metrics.
> 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.”
But wait, there's this:
> Beyond nonprofits like Eleos, most of the hiring has been concentrated at DeepMind and Anthropic, each of which employs at least a half-dozen philosophers.
So, between 6 and 12 each?
- gregates 3mo agoWhat you're missing is that this is approximately at least a half-dozen more jobs than open tenure-track positions at research universities.
- cwillu 3mo agoWouldn't the correct comparison would be filled positions tenure and tenure-track positions?
- gregates 3mo agoThe implicit assumption is that these AI-company jobs were recently created and indicate the start of a trend. Chalmers is stating that there's more demand for philosophers with the right sort of training to work at AI companies (whatever that is) than there are philosophers with that training. (I don't really believe this, but that's what he says.) He's making this claim for two reasons: (1) to respond to the argument (not directly stated in the article, but quite commonly understood to be sound in the profession field) that it's unwise to get a PhD in philosophy because there are not enough jobs and (2) to suggest that if you do want to get a PhD in philosophy and use it professionally, you'd be wise to study with Chalmers at NYU in order to get placed into these tech-industry jobs.
- taeric 3mo agoWow, it is hard not to immediately think of that meme. There are indeed dozens of them!
- Pamar 3mo agoHalf-dozens of them, apparently.
- vitorfblima 3mo agomore than half a dozen, probably, so safe to say there could be as much as ten.
- zombot 3mo agoCan earth's population fill that demand?
- fellowniusmonk 3mo agoThe revenge of the _nearly a dozen_ philosophers.
- consensus1 3mo agoPhilosophy majors. That piece of paper does not make you a philosopher.
- c7b 3mo agoBit of a tangent, but it's fun to think about how much it takes to become a -er, -ian or -ist in a given field. Philosophy is probably one of the hardest, you need to be seen as up there with the all-time greats. In history or physics you probably need to be faculty, in economics you need to have a PhD, in engineering you don't even need a degree but you need to be practicing,...
- chasd00 3mo ago> you need to be seen as up there with the all-time greats when in school i hung out with a lot of architecture students. They were all told and taught that they will be the next Frank Lloyd Wright or a failure. Then they graduate and end up getting a job drawing construction documents for Taco Bell. Heh they're a pretty jaded bunch.
- keiferski 3mo agoStill an “architect” though.
- jambalaya8 3mo agoWas thinking about this the other day, though it seems they would need to be fairly shortsighted not to realise this before they chose it as a profession. Never the less, it is a stable income (til AI takes over the bulk of designing all of those franchise locations, anyway, or whatever). People respect the career. Imagine not reading up on it after reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", and deciding to major in architecture in college. I would have felt brutally misled. Computer game programming probably felt like that to a lot of people in the 80s and 90s. Honestly, can't think of many fields that would not feel disappointingly limited and too competitive for 'the good projects' now. :(
- alfiedotwtf 3mo ago> a prominent philosopher of consciousness at N.Y.U., observes… The irony
- mrhottakes 3mo ago> This article seems high on vibes, low on metrics. That's the in-house style for the WSJ
- beastman82 3mo agoNot sure if it changed but this is written by NYTimes. FWIW I think the WSJ is the best news source available and does not match this description.
- talon8635 3mo agoAgree 100%
- dlcarrier 3mo agoThat reminds me of a survey that found that in the entire field of Social Psychology, there was something like eight people that indicated they would vote for Romney over Obama.
- FranzFerdiNaN 3mo agoWell yeah rightwing people are not the kind of people to take up psychology. I also don’t think you will find many Marxists in corporate law .
- UncleOxidant 3mo agoAt this point I wouldn't consider Romney "rightwing", more of a centrist by current standards. Heck, the president probably thinks Romney is a socialist.
- ihsw 3mo ago[dead]
- throwaway27448 3mo ago> I also don’t think you will find many Marxists in corporate law . I imagine you'd find more than average, actually. You have a front-row seat to how the sausage is made.
- onraglanroad 3mo agoI suppose that makes sense if you assume that people who aren't right wing must be Marxist. I'm neither and am labelled left wing because I think everyone deserves some basic level of life and dignity.
- dlcarrier 3mo agoRomney was even pretty centrist, to the point that Obamacare was based on Romney's plan. A similar analogy would be if only a half dozen employees in some field were willing to vote for Fetterman.
- throwaway27448 3mo ago> each of which employs at least a half-dozen philosophers. Imagine knowing that you're hired to launder regulatory capture for a trillion dollar corporation lol
- jambalaya8 3mo agoImagine explaining Nietzsche's relationship with his sister to an AI. :/
- why_at 3mo agoThere was another article on this recently[1], if I didn't know better I would suspect this narrative is being pushed by some PR firm. Maybe it's coming from AI companies trying to imply their models are so advanced that they need philosophers to determine if they're conscious or something? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662452
- grantcas 3mo ago[dead]