I increasingly have friends ask what philosophy they should read to help think about AI. I've come to realize that using LLMs is pushing all of us to more closely examine our philosophical assumptions. Seemingly esoteric questions like who has moral status now feel urgent: people want to know if they should say "please" and "thank you" to Chat!

Below is a rough attempt at laying out what in philosophy is most relevant for AI. I split the list between foundational philosophical concepts for thinking about AI and more applied frameworks for how to build and use AI

Part 1: Philosophical Concepts

• What is a mind?

  • Nagel, What is it like to be a bat

  • Chalmers, Facing up to the problem of consciousness

  • Putnam, The Nature of Mental States

  • Searle, Minds, Brains, and Programs

• What is agency?

  • Anscombe, Intention

  • Dennett, The Intentional Stance

  • Bratman, Shared Cooperative Activity

  • Applbaum, Legitimacy (group agents)

• Who has moral status?

  • Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (indirect duties)

  • Singer, Animal Liberation

  • Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures

• What are reasons and values?

  • Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

  • Parfit, On What Matters (Volume II, Part 6)

  • Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

  • Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity 

Part 2: How should we build AI

• How might AIs come to implement our values? 

  • Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

  • Bostrom, The Superintelligent Will

  • Plato, The Republic (Book I)

  • Anthropic, Emergent Misalignment

• How should AI be involved in governance?

  • Applbaum, Legitimacy (“domination by a stone”)

  • Séb Krier, Coasean Bargaining at Scale

  • Newsom, Snell v United Specialty Insurance Company (concurrence)

  • Cass Sunstein and Vermeule, Law and Leviathan

• How might AI impact human flourishing?

  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

  • Mill, On Liberty

  • Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person

  • Brendan McCord, Live by the Claude, Die by the Claude

• How do we find meaning in a post-AGI world?

  • Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

  • Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Philosophy and the Meaning of Life)

  • Bostrom, Deep Utopia

  • Mandel, The Top Three AGI-Proof Careers and What They Reveal About Our Humanity and The Future