For years, ambitious students eager to make their mark in Silicon Valley pursued degrees such as computer science, software engineering and data analytics—formerly dependable pathways that, in the age of A.I., have turned precarious. In an unexpected turn, however, at least one degree is now translating into high-profile jobs across the industry: philosophy.
As leading A.I. firms race to cement their dominance, they are also grappling with the complexities of developing and releasing powerful systems with opaque inner workings. Enter philosophers, who are increasingly taking on formal roles at companies like Anthropic and Google DeepMind. Their work focuses on interpreting model behavior, aligning systems with human values, and guiding decisions about how these technologies should be treated.
“It seems to be a good time for philosophers on the job market,” Anil Seth, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex who researches consciousness, told Observer. “This is great. More companies should hire philosophers, because thinking clearly is increasingly important.”
Prominent philosophers at Anthropic, Google DeepMind
One of the field’s most prominent figures is Amanda Askell, a Scottish-born philosopher who studied at New York University and the University of Oxford. After working at OpenAI, Askell moved to Anthropic in 2021, where she focuses on shaping the behavior of its Claude model. She is joined by fellow philosophers such as Joe Carlsmith, who came to Anthropic last year after a seven-year stint at Open Philanthropy and similarly works on Claude’s character.
At Google DeepMind, the company’s efforts around A.I. and morality are led by Iason Gabriel, a former Oxford professor with a background in political philosophy. The lab also recently hired Henry Shevlin, a professor at the University of Cambridge, to work on issues such as “machine consciousness, human-A.I. relationships, and AGI readiness,” according to his announcement.
Questions about whether A.I. could ever achieve consciousness—and what that would mean for human-machine relationships—remain especially complex. Companies must avoid repeating “moral errors” while also steering clear of prematurely granting rights to A.I. systems, which could risk “hampering our ability to control them, to regulate them, to keep them aligned with human society,” said Seth.
Anthropic has been among the most vocal companies on this front, not only hiring philosophers but also establishing a dedicated model welfare team. Meta’s chief A.I. officer, Alexandr Wang, has likewise described model welfare as “a very important topic” that deserves more consideration. Others are more skeptical. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has warned that treating A.I. systems as conscious could lead society into dangerous territory.
For now, the motivations behind the industry’s hiring of philosophers appear substantive. “They’re hiring good people, not just hiring people who would be sort of PR types and not just people who would translate for the public what’s happening,” Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of Sydney, told Observer. “These are people who probe the issues,” added the philosopher, who formerly counted Shevlin amongst his Ph.D. students at the CUNY Graduate Center.
The intersection of A.I. and philosophy is not limited to Silicon Valley. Academia is rapidly adapting as longstanding philosophical questions—about consciousness, morality, minds and computation—take on new urgency. In some cases, scholars working at this intersection are even developing new forms of language that incorporate mathematical techniques, reflecting changes that did not exist a decade ago, according to Godfrey-Smith.
Whether these shifts will meaningfully reshape career prospects for philosophers remains uncertain. Graduates with bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and religion earn a median wage of $65,000, below the $70,000 average across all degree holders, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which identifies law as the most common profession for such graduates.
For philosophy Ph.D. holders, the traditional path has been clearer. “It’s almost certain that your default plan is to teach philosophy at the university level,” said Robert Long, who leads Eleos AI, a nonprofit focused on A.I. wellbeing.
The emergence of philosopher roles at frontier A.I. firms is unlikely to dramatically reshape the job market on its own, Long told Observer. However, the broader growth of research centers focused on A.I. and ethics could “meaningfully change the job market.” Even so, the shift will be gradual. “There are more and more places to be doing philosophy, but not enough to make the job market not very difficult and stressful for a lot of people.”
