Philosophy of AI

AI&Humanity-Lab

I’m the founder and director of AI&Humanity-Lab at HKU, funded by a major grant from HKU: AI&Humanity-Lab. AI&Humanity-Lab@HKU conducts research on the ways in which AI interacts with and transforms humanity. Our projects are interdisciplinary with a basis in philosophy.

I’m on the steering committee for the Institute of Data Science at HKU. Here I discuss my work in that context.

MA in AI, Ethics and Society

I’m the program director of a new MA program at the University of Hong Kong: AI, Ethics and Society. More information about the program can be found here: https://www.maaies.arts.hku.hk/

Work on Philosophy of AI

Books

Rachel Sterken and I are editors of a forthcoming Open Access volume on OUP: Communicating with AI: Philosophical Perspectives. This is the first major volume with philosophical perspectives on how humans can communicate with an AI, e.g., ChatGPT. Table of Contents can be found here.
My first book on the philosophy of AI was co-authored with Josh Dever: Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Perspectives.
My second book on the philosophy of AI, also co-authored with Josh Dever, is now forthcoming: Recognising Artificial Minds: A Philosophical Defense of AI Cognition.

Papers

A Hyper-Externalist Manifesto for LLMs
Forthcoming in Herman Cappelen & Rachel Sterken (eds.) Communicating with AI: Philosophical Perspectives (with Josh Dever)
Introspective Machines: Are LLMs Better at Self-Reflection than Humans?
Philosophical Perspectives (2025) (with Josh Dever)
AI Survival Stories: a Taxonomic Analysis of AI Existential Risk
Forthcoming in Philosophy of AI (with Simon Goldstein and John Hawthorne)
AI Safety: A Climb To Armageddon?
Philosophical Studies (2025) (with Josh Dever and John Hawthorne).
AI with Alien Content and Alien Metasemantics
Forthcoming in L. Anderson and E. Lepore (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press (with Josh Dever).

Selected talks

June–July 2025, University of London, Paris Campus: AI and De-Anthropomorphized Philosophy
March 2025, East China Normal University: How AI Can Transform Philosophy
March 2025, Fudan University, Shanghai:
- A Bad Question: “Can AIs be Conscious?”
- Introspective Machines
Fall 2024, Beijing Normal University, Lecture Series:
- AI and Embodiment
- AI and the De-anthropomorphizing of Philosophy
- AI and Theory Building
- The Mind of AI: Engineering Empathy
- AI, Externalism and Theory Neutrality
September 2024, University of Munich: The Mind of AI: Engineering Empathy
June 2024, Barcelona/Sitges Conference on Conceptual Engineering: The Philosophy of AI and Conceptual Engineering: Some Puzzles
March 2024, American Philosophical Association: AI Alignment and Safety
June 2023, SAS London – ChatGPT Has Beliefs: Methodology and Arguments (with Josh Dever), ChatGPT and Other Creative Rivals
May 2023, Institute of Philosophy: AI Agency
May 2023, The Problems of Philosophy in Virtual Reality, Stockholm: Can AI Transform Philosophy? On Technophilosophy and Conceptual Engineering
May 2023, Stockholm: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI
May 2023, PHILANG, Lodz: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI
May 2023, Wuhan University: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI
April 2023, Institute of Data Science Interdisciplinary Speaker Series, HKU: The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: What it is, why it matters, and how it can influence the development of AI