Why Philosophers Are Worried About AI

Author: Bloomberg Television · Watch on YouTube

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Original language: English

Original video: Why Philosophers Are Worried About AI · Channel: Bloomberg Television · 12:10 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: Enterprise AI applications, AI governance and regulation, Open source and software ecosystems

Summary

The report explores a concern beyond whether AI might threaten humanity: how it could reshape human connection, presence, authenticity, and our understanding of ourselves. Michael Sandel warns that virtual life and bot-generated relationships could weaken the conditions for genuine community, while Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier argues that education should combine technological fluency with independent thinking and the humanities. Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan describes both the risks created by economic pressure to deploy AI quickly and the possibility that users and market forces can influence companies. The speakers emphasize that ethical responsibility belongs not only to builders and regulators, but also to people deciding how AI enters their schools, workplaces, families, and social lives.

Key points

The report frames AI as a technology that may change what it means to be human, not merely as a potential threat to humanity.
Sandel is concerned that virtual presence and bot-generated relationships may displace authentic connection, friendship, and community.
Diermeier says education should help students use technology responsibly while developing their own minds and ability to think for themselves.
He argues that students need both technological fluency and the capacity to reflect on technology and the meaning of life.
Historical concerns about writing and the printing press were not necessarily mistaken; those technologies transformed how people understood themselves and society.
Sullivan warns that investment and competitive pressure could push companies to deploy AI without sufficient ethical discernment or safety.
Sullivan also sees the possibility that ethically discerning users and market forces may pressure companies to act responsibly.
Individuals have agency over whether and how AI is adopted in workplaces, families, social lives, and schools.
The report concludes that technology is not an innocent tool: it can reshape the people who invent and use it.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	AI and what it means to be human	The report introduces AI as a tool that may reshape human relationships and explores Sandel’s concerns about authenticity, presence, and community.
02:40	Education and independent thinking	Diermeier explains how universities can integrate responsible technology use with independent thought and the humanities.
05:16	What past technologies can teach us	Sandel argues that historical worries about writing and printing reflected real transformations in human thought and society.
07:57	AI investment, ethics, and safety	Sullivan discusses the ethical risks of economic pressure to develop AI quickly, alongside the potential influence of users and markets.
10:04	Shared responsibility and human flourishing	Sullivan calls on individuals to exercise agency over AI use, while Diermeier advocates combining technical skills with critical thinking.

Quotes

whether it will change what it means to be human — 01:04

engaging in true friendships, not ones generated by bots. — 02:07

to combine or integrate technological progress with human flourishing. — 05:16

That is the wrong mindset. — 11:07

Technology is when we invent tools that reshape us. — 12:10

Concepts and entities

Artificial intelligence, AI ethics, human flourishing, Michael Sandel, Daniel Diermeier, Meghan Sullivan, Chrystia Freeland

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 Westin: This is a story about tools. For over 3 million years, humans have created and used tools to change the world around them, building things, moving things, growing things. But now it may be the tool of AI that changes us, how we think, how we interact with one another, all with the potential consequences we may not see. Our special correspondent, Chrystia Freeland, brings us a report from the front lines of those trying to come to terms with the biggest AI risk no one is talking about.

00:33 -The growing concerns about the risks from artificial intelligence so far have focused on the machines themselves. -First, we could lose control of the future to AI. -This is a super weapon. You should have to own a gun license to use it. -But Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel says the bigger question may be lurking under the surface. -We have lots of good reasons to be worried, but the real question is not whether AI will destroy humanity,

01:04 but whether it will change what it means to be human, whether it will change the way we live together, relate to one another, understand ourselves. -What do you mean by that? -Forgetting and losing contact with actual human connection and community, presence. Authenticity. Being there, not being “Everywhere All at Once.” The title, the brilliant title of that movie,

01:36 spoke to this utopian aspiration that the power of the virtual will enable us to transcend place and presence and authentic human connection and will enable us to be everywhere all at once. I find that a dark vision, not a hopeful utopia, because it leads us away from cultivating

02:07 the conditions for the human relations that situate us in the world, being present to one another, exploring and challenging our authenticity, engaging in true friendships, not ones generated by bots. This, I think, is how AI will call into question what it means to be human. And even though we haven’t had a broad public debate about this, I think people sense that this is what’s at stake.

02:40 -There may be no place better suited for this debate than our college campuses, where the next generation is learning how to think, finding their communities and forming their view of the world, just as AI is becoming part of how they learn and communicate. It’s a dynamic that Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier considers often. -The goal here is always that the students understand and are able to use technology responsibly as appropriate for the specific class. But our goal is to help them

03:11 develop their own mind, their habits of mind, their ability to think for themselves. And that’s front and center. The technology needs to be part of that, but that is always the purpose of a transformative education. -For Diermeier, preserving that ability to think for yourself is bringing new attention to some of the oldest disciplines. There are a lot of people now who are saying, actually, the poor, disrespected humanities disciplines, whether it’s history or philosophy or literature, are maybe going to have a new relevance

03:44 in the age of AI. Do you buy that? -To me, the most important thing is that we need to embrace both. It’s that when we educate students, when they’re Vanderbilt graduates, they need to be able to be fluent in the technology and be able to think about technology and the meaning of life, more broadly speaking, in a deep and profound way. That’s what it means to be an educated person in today’s world. -Sounds like you’re embracing AI rather than being scared it’s going to rot the brains of your students.

04:15 -Well, I think the history of humanity has seen a whole sequence of revolutionary technologies, and they have had a profound impact on our lives, you know, in our mind, from the origin of agriculture to the book to the internet and so forth. We have to embrace that, but we have to do it thoughtfully and intentionally. -So wasn’t Socrates a little bit worried that the written word would wreck our thinking skills and wreck our memory? -Yes, of course, exactly.

04:46 And that’s the perfect example. I think when we see, you know, when we see any type of transformative technology happening out, like the creating of books, you know, through Gutenberg and so forth, and the Bible had a transformative impact on society. That’s not the first time, the Industrial Revolution, had transformative impact on society. And humans will not stop innovating and creating new things, and they will have a transformative impact. Our role as educators and university leaders and leaders in a broader aspect of society

05:16 is to be thoughtful, intentional about that, and to combine or integrate technological progress with human flourishing. -That human flourishing must be the ultimate goal in developing this powerful new tool called AI. But when we’re talking about changing the way we think, some of us get nervous. And Sandel, while recognizing that changes like moving to the written word worked out okay, warns us not to take this change too lightly.

05:48 You are not the first philosopher to worry that a new technology would change the way we think and who we are as humans. Famously, philosophers worried that moving from oral argument to a written culture would harm our memory, would harm our ability to debate. Is there any danger that this is just a transition like the many others we’ve had? And, you know, ultimately,

06:19 I think it’s probably a good thing that we now write. Is that how we’re going to look back on AI in 50 years? -Well, I would turn the question around. I think those early worries were not mere superstition, atavistic concerns that were obviously false. Socrates, who began philosophy in the Western tradition, if he lived at a time of publish or perish, he would have perished as in fact he did for corrupting the youth of Athens. Or take the invention of the printing press.

06:50 People felt that printing the Bible and making it widely accessible would have theological consequences. No longer would the hierarchy of the church be able to interpret the meaning of sacred texts. Now, we say, well, it’s a good thing. Everyone can read for themselves the sacred texts and Scripture. And that is a good thing. But were they entirely wrong? Or was there a theological transformation that resulted

07:23 from direct person-to-person access with texts unmediated by various theological authorities and religious authorities? So I think we underestimate the insight that those earlier philosophers had who worried about the impact of technology on our humanity. If we forget that these technologies did transform the way we understand ourselves,

07:57 meaning, purpose, even questions of theology. -And if a technology can alter even our most basic ways of thinking, are those building these powerful new tools considering those possibilities as they build something we’ve never seen before? It’s a conversation Notre Dame philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan has been having with some of those very people. -Capitalism and ethics have always had a complicated relationship, to put it mildly.

08:31 On the scary side, these companies and our U.S. economy have made massive bets on artificial intelligence. Some reports say that 2% of our country’s GDP is now invested in building data centers and training powerful AIs. That is a much bigger economic bet on one single piece of technology than we have ever made in the history of our country. And so we have to make sure, we have this feeling that we have to make sure

09:03 that that bet pays off, which means we had better figure out a way to develop this technology and get it out there in the economy as broadly as possible. And that might mean that engineers and companies are under so much pressure to respond to the market and investors that they do not have the time to do appropriate ethical discernment and safety. So that’s the scary scenario. Now, the more optimistic scenario is we have a series of companies who are in this incredibly intense race

09:34 with one another to be the top dog at the end of this economic transformation. And that means that they have to address a global market of users who are now pretty ethically skeptical of the intentions of tech companies and are pretty discerning. And so I have some hope that market forces and the consciences of users in mass are gonna be able to pressure the tech companies to make decisions, hopefully, in enough time

10:04 to avoid a really major safety incident or a really bad disruption that hurts people’s lives. -But it’s not enough for just the people building AI to consider the implications. Sullivan says all of us need to be aware of the risks and take responsibility for how this new tool is used. -There is a widespread feeling that only a very small number of people have ethical responsibility for artificial intelligence right now. It’s either the handful of corporate executives

10:36 at big tech companies who are building these products or maybe a handful of regulators in Washington D.C. who could decide to put laws constraining them. I think that this is far too narrow approach to AI ethics. In fact, a lot of us have agency and decision-making about what kinds of AI we’re gonna allow into our workplaces, into our families and social lives, into our schools. And realizing that you have a lot of say

11:07 at the moment about how AI affects your day-to-day life is going to be a really important realization for trying to exercise some of our ethical agency about what kind of world we’re gonna build with this technology. It’s in the interests of political powers and corporate powers to make you feel like you’re just along for the ride. You just have to accept whatever decision they make. That is the wrong mindset. -For Diermeier, the answer is not to choose between technology and the human skills that came

11:38 before it, but to develop both. -Our students, when they graduate, need to be bilingual. This is the task. They need to be able to have facility with the technologies that are reshaping our lives. And they need to be able to think on their own, to be able to embrace these things, but also understand the limitations, have a critical, but not dogmatic, point of view on technology and really the great questions that are confronting our lives. -And that makes paying attention to the trade-offs

12:10 all the more important. -Technology is not just a tool. It’s not an innocent tool. It’s a tool we invent that doubles back on us. Technology is when we invent tools that reshape us.