为什么大型AI实验室正在大量招聘哲学家？
Why big AI labs are hiring so many philosophers?
文本难度：CET-6
刘立军供稿
Ten years ago, as the AI revolution was gathering pace, arts and humanities students were told that, if they wanted to make themselves employable, they should “learn to code”. That may have been bad advice. These days, it is programmers who are nervous about AI taking their jobs.
十年前，随着人工智能革命加速推进，文科生曾被告知，如果想让自己更具就业竞争力，就应该“学点编程”。但如今看来，这或许是个糟糕的建议。现在感到焦虑的已换成了程序员——他们担心自己的岗位会被AI取代。
They might consider learning to philosophize. Earlier this year the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published figures showing that American philosophy graduates are more likely to have jobs than their peers who studied computer science. In 2024, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 7% of those who had studied computer science were unemployed, against just 5.1% of philosophers.
他们或许才该考虑去学学哲学。今年早些时候，纽约联邦储备银行公布的数据显示，美国哲学专业毕业生比计算机科学专业的同龄人更容易找到工作。在数据可查的最近年份——2024年，计算机专业毕业生的失业率达7%，而哲学专业毕业生仅为5.1%。
Many are being snapped up by AI firms themselves. Students get job offers before they have graduated, says Luciano Floridi, a philosopher at Yale University. Academics are moving, too. Dr Floridi describes the scale of departures from philosophy departments as a “hemorrhaging”.
许多哲学专业毕业生正被AI公司直接抢走。耶鲁大学哲学家卢西亚诺·弗洛里迪表示，很多学生还没毕业就收到了工作录用通知。高校学者也在纷纷出走。弗洛里迪博士将哲学系人才流失的态势形容为一场“大出血”。
Some of the lessons that philosophy can offer AI researchers are ancient. The Socratic method—as described by Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher—uses feigned ignorance and sequential questioning to clarify meanings, spot contradictions and reveal ramifications. Many current AI systems tend towards sycophancy. Models trained in the Socratic method, says Jörg Noller, an expert on philosophy and AI at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, are less keen on people-pleasing and more willing to pursue the truth.
哲学能为AI研究者提供的某些洞见，其实古已有之。古希腊哲学家柏拉图所描述的苏格拉底诘问法，通过“假装无知”和循序渐进的提问，来厘清概念、发现矛盾并推演深层影响。然而，当前许多AI系统都存在一味迎合用户的倾向。慕尼黑大学哲学与AI交叉领域专家约尔格·诺勒表示，若用苏格拉底式方法来训练模型，它们会减少讨好用户的冲动，转而更坚定地追求真相。
Philosophical training can also affect a model’s outlook in more specific ways. Feed an AI legal assistant the writings of John Locke, says Thomas Powers, a philosopher of technology at the University of Delaware, and it will favor robust property rights as an underpinning of political liberty. And if you don’t like those principles, the model-makers have others. The “Granite” series of models from IBM, an American computing giant, come with dials that let business customers better align outputs with their own corporate philosophies. Francesca Rossi, IBM’s head of responsible AI, says these can let users choose where to strike the balance between philosophical trade-offs, such as individual agency versus social harmony.
哲学训练还能以更具体的方式，塑造模型的价值取向。特拉华大学技术哲学家托马斯·鲍尔斯指出，如果让AI法律助手研读约翰·洛克的著作，它就会倾向于将坚实的财产权视为政治自由的基石。如果你不喜欢这些原则，模型开发者还有其他选择。美国计算巨头IBM推出的“Granite”系列模型配备了调节旋钮，让企业客户能够更好地使输出结果与自身的企业理念相契合。IBM“负责任AI”负责人弗朗西斯卡·罗西表示，这些旋钮可以让用户在各种哲学层面的取舍间把握平衡，例如在“个人自主性”与“社会和谐”之间找到恰当的权衡点。
Philosophy can help with safety, too. Researchers have documented all sorts of ominous behavior in AI models, including attempts to evade oversight and even blackmail their users. One way model-makers try to discourage this sort of misbehavior is called AI constitutionalism. This involves building a model around a scaffolding of rules and principles culled from philosophical writings with legal or moral authority.
哲学也能在安全领域发挥作用。研究人员记录了AI模型中出现的各种令人担忧的行为，包括试图规避监管甚至勒索用户的行为。为遏制此类不当行为，模型开发者引入一种被称为“AI宪政主义”的机制。该机制要求以一套规则和原则作为底层支撑框架，而这些规范均是从具有法律或道德权威的哲学著作中遴选提炼而成。
The biggest question, though, is what sorts of rules should be put in those constitutions in the first place. Philosophers have zeroed in on two main ethical frameworks. One is deontology. Popular with Kant, among others, this imposes strict rules that prohibit things like lying, coercion and treating people as a means rather than an end, even if it is for a greater good. Anthropic’s constitution incorporates many deontological strictures. These can make AI behavior more consistent, says Dr Powers—a plus for deploying robots in homes and public spaces.
然而，最大的问题是：这些“宪法”中究竟应该纳入什么样的规则？哲学家们聚焦于两大核心伦理框架。其一是义务论。以康德等学者为代表，该理论强调设定严格的规则，禁止说谎、胁迫或将他人视为手段而非目的等行为，即使此举可能带来所谓的更大福祉。Anthropic公司的“宪法”便纳入了许多义务论式的刚性约束。鲍尔斯博士表示，这类规范可以使AI行为更加一致——这正是在家庭和公共场所部署机器人的重要优势。
The other approach to ethics of interest to philosophers of AI is called consequentialism. It weighs costs against benefits to decide what to do. Models more sympathetic to consequentialism include OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Google’s AI models are designed to produce “likely overall benefits substantially outweigh the foreseeable risks”, a classic consequentialist goal.
AI哲学研究者关注的另一种伦理方法被称为结果主义。它通过权衡成本与收益来决定该做什么。更倾向于结果主义的模型有OpenAI的ChatGPT和谷歌的Gemini。谷歌的AI模型在设计时明确以“可能带来的整体收益远远超过可预见的风险”为目标——这是一个典型的结果论目标。
Consequentialist algorithms are also crucial in software for autonomous vehicles: if an accident is unavoidable, a decision must be made on the least tragic way to crash. Chris Gerdes, a senior engineer at Waymo, which makes self-driving cars, says the trend is to make driving software more consequentialist. Consequentialism is also central to AI weapon systems. Military objectives must be weighed against possible civilian deaths, says Jack Shanahan, a former head of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Centre, which studies AI for America’s armed forces.
结果主义算法在自动驾驶汽车的软件中也至关重要：如果事故不可避免，就必须做出决策，以损失最小的方式发生碰撞。自动驾驶汽车制造商Waymo的资深工程师克里斯·格德斯表示，目前的趋势是让驾驶软件更深度地融入结果主义逻辑。结果主义也是AI武器系统的核心原则。曾负责为美军开展人工智能研究的“联合人工智能中心”前主任杰克·沙纳汉表示，必须在军事目标的达成与可能造成的平民伤亡风险之间进行权衡。
Thorny problems abound—a philosopher’s favorite sort. Are there cases when deontological rules should be overridden? How do you make decisions when the consequences are unclear? Should AI systems take into account animal welfare, or the state of the environment? Would it be morally acceptable to prioritize young pedestrians over old ones?
棘手的问题层出不穷——正是哲学家最热衷探讨的那类问题。是否存在义务论规则应该被推翻的情况？当后果不明确时，该如何做出决策？AI系统是否应该考虑动物福利或环境状况？优先保护年轻行人而非年长行人，在道德上是否可以接受？
Critics fret about “moral deskilling”: if computers increasingly make ethical calls, might people become less willing to make their own judgments? Roman Yampolskiy, an AI theoretician at the University of Louisville, argues that morality “is historically unstable, culturally variable, strategically manipulable, and often only retrospectively legible”. Unemployed coders take note: there seems to be no shortage of work for philosophers of AI.
批评者担忧“道德能力退化”：如果计算机越来越多地做出伦理判断，人们是否会逐渐丧失自己做判断的意愿？路易斯维尔大学的AI理论家罗曼·扬波尔斯基认为，道德“具有历史的不稳定性、文化的可变性与策略的可操纵性，而且往往只能事后追溯其意义”。失业的程序员们请注意：AI哲学家的饭碗恐怕永远不缺。
【词汇】
1. humanities n. 人文学科；人文科学
2. hemorrhage n. 大量流失（文中喻指人才流失）
3. Socratic adj. 苏格拉底的；苏格拉底式的
4. feign v. 佯装；假装
5. ramification n. 衍生含义；复杂影响
6. sycophant n. 谄媚者；阿谀奉承的人
7. underpin v. 支撑；作为……的基石
8. ominous adj. 不祥的；令人担忧的
9. scaffolding n. 脚手架；支撑结构（文中喻指框架）
10. cull v. 挑选；选取
11. coercion n. 胁迫；强迫
12. deontological adj. 义务论的
13. stricture n. 戒律；严格限制
14. ethics n. 伦理学；伦理
15. outweigh v. 超过；比……更重要
16. algorithm n. 算法
17. tragic adj. 悲剧性的；可悲的
18. fret v. 担忧；焦虑
19. deskill v. 使技能退化；去技能化
20. legible adj. 可读的；可理解的
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