Section
PhilosophyPath
Philosophy as the upstream of how we should reason, build, and govern AI. Essays, philosopher landings, and comparisons that connect classical philosophy to current AI debates.
Most readers should start with the essays. The philosopher and work pages are reference material — read after an essay references them, not as an entry point.
Essays on philosophy and AI
Long-form arguments connecting classical philosophy to current AI debates. Each essay is 25–60 minutes of reading.
Correction, Recourse, and Surplus
22 minWhat AI productivity studies do not measure. Starts from the cleanest published case (Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond's randomized rollout to 5,172 customer-support agents) and reconstructs the institutional questions the headline 14 percent…
Empiricism, Induction, and the Limits of LLM Generalization
philosophy-of-ai · #1 · 30 minLocke, Hume, and Kant clarify the modern AI scaling debate: where model content comes from, what licenses generalization beyond training data, and why architecture still matters. The essay connects the bitter lesson, the era of experience,…
From Plato's Cave to the Era of Experience
philosophy-of-ai · #2 · 36 minA Philosophy x AI essay on Plato's Cave, imitation, world models, and the claim that future AI systems must learn from interaction rather than from human text alone. The argument is not that Plato predicted AI. He did not. The argument is t…
Four Lenses on the AI Economy
philosophy-of-ai · #4 · 22 minRawls, Foucault, Marx, and Beauvoir as four analytical lenses on workplace AI. A fairness dashboard for a hiring model is a local property of a decision system; justice in the AI economy is a structural property of the institutions around t…
AI Productivity and the Distribution Question
philosophy-of-ai · #5 · 28 minAI is not just a productivity tool; it is a surplus-routing mechanism. For every productivity gain, the question is who captures it through wages, margins, vendor licensing, lower prices, reduced headcount, or cloud rents, and who loses bar…
Call-Center AI: A Case Study in Productivity, Surveillance, and Surplus
philosophy-of-ai · #6 · 24 minA grounded case study in the Philosophy × AI series. Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond's randomized rollout of a generative-AI assistant to 5,172 customer-support agents at a large software firm gave a 14 percent productivity gain that fell alm…
Philosophers
Landing pages for individual philosophers — biography, key positions, what they got right and wrong, what AI inherits.
Comparisons
Side-by-side treatments of two philosophers or two positions. Where they agree, where they part, why it matters now.