Philosophy has always been an important pillar of our society — a system that constructs the boundaries we cannot identify. It defines right and wrong, giving our emotions a word and ideologies a meaning. It is a field that is not asked for, yet it remains important in its quiet existence.
Today, in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the question about the future of academia is an ongoing argument. If AI can write your papers and assignments and do your research, then what will become of your cognitive skills once you actually sit down to think? One of the most human forms of thinking is the ability to create new ideas and philosophies, a skill that AI lacks.
An AI can only collect information from already present data and give you a formulated and well-put-together answer, but it lacks any original thought. It produces a paper full of facts and knowledge but deprived of the unique human point of view.
Philosophy is one of the fields AI is unable to copy because it is unable to think for itself. Only humans are able to sit in silence with their thoughts and ponder the meanings of life and its mysteries. AI does not have the luxury of time because it has to constantly run between a heated data centre and an impatient user waiting for their hundredth AI-generated mock picture.
The Corporate Co-optation of Thought
Yet, behind the scenes in Silicon Valley, companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta are hiring philosophers and sociologists to train their AI models. For years, philosophy was important academically to answer theoretical questions, but it held little value in the professional capitalist world. Now, tech giants are paying thousands of dollars to philosophers just so their AI can develop a smidge of the thought processes that humans naturally possess.
This trend is alarming. Until now, we believed the only way to distinguish AI from humans was the identification of a unique human perspective. If AI can mimic even that in the near future, what will remain of our identity?
Reclaiming Autonomy
Under these conditions, the need for philosophy is greater than ever. We need humans who define the modern concepts of AI ethics and the future of humanity — individuals who ask the questions nobody else wants to, who invest their thoughts in concepts not yet explored, and who question right and wrong without the fear of being fired by a tech CEO.
The art of philosophy is what reminds us of the uniqueness of being human; it shows the importance of pursuing answers that are not strictly needed for survival but exist to satiate human curiosity. An AI is deprived of these pleasures. It cannot think like a human, and therefore it should not be allowed to manufacture answers about human life.
This is why the need for philosophers in the age of AI is greater than ever. We need to keep asking theoretical questions, cultivate our humanity, wonder about the future, and warn others about the attempts to take away our autonomy. We need to keep our curiosity alive, and we need to keep the philosophers out of Silicon Valley.