Stephen Wolfram believes we need philosophers working on important problems around AI

Mathematician and scientist Steven Turfrum grew up in a house where his mother was a professor of the philosophy of Oxford University. So it's young, I didn't want to have anything to do with the theme, but the senior and probably wise tungsten look at the deep reflection on things. He now hopes to bring some of this deep philosophical rigor to AI research, to help us better understand the challenges we face as AI becomes more capable.

Wolfram was something of a child prodigy, publishing his first scientific paper at age 15 and earning his PhD from Caltech at 20. His impressive body of work spans science, mathematics, and computer science: he developed Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, and the Wolfram Language, a powerful computer programming language.

"My main work in life, along with basic science, is to create our Wolfram Language, with the goal of having a way to express things computationally that is useful to both humans and computers," Wolfram told TechCrunch. As AI developers and others start to think more deeply about how computers and people intersect, Wolfram says it is becoming much more of a philosophical exercise, involving thinking in the pure sense about the implications this kind of technology may have on humanity. That kind of complex thinking is linked to classical philosophy. "The problem is what you think, this is another type of question, and this is a more common question in traditional philosophy than traditional barrels," he said.

For example, when you start talking about how to put a guardrail on AI, these are essentially philosophical questions. "In tech, when people talk about how AI should do this or that, some people might say, 'Well, let's let it do it,' and then we think, 'So what's the right thing to do?'" And determining moral choices is a philosophical exercise.

He said he's had "terrible discussions" with companies that are clearly pushing AI out into the world without thinking about it. "If you try to discuss how people think about these kinds of issues, you'd be shocked at how unclear people don't think about these issues. But I don't know how to solve these problems. This is a problem, but I think such philosophical issues have the current sense.

He says it is difficult for scientists to think about things in philosophical terms. "One of the things I noticed is really incredible, when talking to a scientist, and when you talk about great ideas, they find such a confused environment. Because it is not generally what happens. " "Science is an incremental field, and we cannot expect to encounter radically different ways of thinking about things."

If the main task of philosophy is to answer big existential questions, he sees us entering a golden age of philosophy with the growing influence of AI and all the questions it raises. In his opinion, many of the questions we are currently facing because of AI are actually traditional philosophical questions at their core. "I find that the groups of philosophers that I speak to are actually much more agile when it comes to thinking paradigmatically about different kinds of things," he said.

One such encounter during his travels was with a group of master's in philosophy students at Ralston University in Savannah, Georgia. Walphum talked to students about the next collision between liberal arts and technology. In fact, Walflam says he connected Plato's "Republic" because he wanted to return to the roots of Western philosophy with his own thoughts.

“And this question of ‘if the AIs run the world, how do we want them to do that? How do we think about that process? How do we modernize political philosophy in the age of AI? "This kind of thing goes back to the fundamental questions that Plato talked about," he told the students.

Rumi Albert, a student in Ralston's program, has spent her entire career in data science and was fascinated by Wolfram's thinking, having also attended Wolfram Summer School, an annual program designed to help students understand Wolfram's approach to applying science to business ideas. "It's really interesting that someone like Dr. Wolfram is so interested in philosophy, and I think that speaks to the importance of philosophy and a humanistic approach to life, because I think he's evolved so much in his field and is asking more and more philosophical questions," Albert said. The fact that Wolfram, who has been at the forefront of computing for half a century, sees the connection between philosophy and technology may indicate that it's time to start addressing the problem of using AI as more than just a math problem. And maybe bringing philosophers into the discussion is a good way to do that.