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<p>Academic philosophers sometimes quip that in the future the only job safe from automation will be that of philosophy professors. However, the current AI revolution has inspired some AI scholars to propose the future establishment of closed-loop AI systems as a type of superintelligent robot that would essentially outperform and replace human scientists Zenil in the future of fundamental science led by generative closed-loop artificial intelligence, arXiv:2307.07522v3, 1-40, 2023; Schmidt in Mach Learn Sci Technol 5(3): 035045, (2024); Kitano in Npj Syst Bio Appl 7: 1–12, (2021). In this paper, I investigate whether, analogously, academic philosophy could be automated by putative, sufficiently advanced future AI, potentially featuring artificial embodiment as robots. To this end, I distinguish two mutually exclusive metaphilosophical conceptions of the nature of philosophy circumscribed as philosophy as a set of propositions (PP) versus philosophy as an activity (PA). Granting AI proponents that – iff artificial general intelligence (AGI), potentially embodied as superintelligent robots is achieved – natural sciences may be fully automated in the future, I argue for the conditional that if PP is true (but not if PA is true), then it is possible that AI can automate philosophy. Additionally, I consider what it would mean to automate philosophy given the current state of LLMs (e.g., the GPT-5 era). Finally, I briefly consider whether it would be preferable for us to have philosophy automated and argue that there are two <i>prima facie</i> reasons why automating philosophy, if possible, might be undesirable: the reason from obsolescence and the reason from ultimate answers.</p>

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Can we automate philosophy through AI? And should we want to?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年1月28日

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  • Thomas J. Spiegel

摘要

Academic philosophers sometimes quip that in the future the only job safe from automation will be that of philosophy professors. However, the current AI revolution has inspired some AI scholars to propose the future establishment of closed-loop AI systems as a type of superintelligent robot that would essentially outperform and replace human scientists Zenil in the future of fundamental science led by generative closed-loop artificial intelligence, arXiv:2307.07522v3, 1-40, 2023; Schmidt in Mach Learn Sci Technol 5(3): 035045, (2024); Kitano in Npj Syst Bio Appl 7: 1–12, (2021). In this paper, I investigate whether, analogously, academic philosophy could be automated by putative, sufficiently advanced future AI, potentially featuring artificial embodiment as robots. To this end, I distinguish two mutually exclusive metaphilosophical conceptions of the nature of philosophy circumscribed as philosophy as a set of propositions (PP) versus philosophy as an activity (PA). Granting AI proponents that – iff artificial general intelligence (AGI), potentially embodied as superintelligent robots is achieved – natural sciences may be fully automated in the future, I argue for the conditional that if PP is true (but not if PA is true), then it is possible that AI can automate philosophy. Additionally, I consider what it would mean to automate philosophy given the current state of LLMs (e.g., the GPT-5 era). Finally, I briefly consider whether it would be preferable for us to have philosophy automated and argue that there are two prima facie reasons why automating philosophy, if possible, might be undesirable: the reason from obsolescence and the reason from ultimate answers.