文科生为何成AI新宠

AI Favors Arts and Humanities Students

AI 更 爱 文 科 生

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，随着人工智能革命的加速，有人告诉文科生，若想具备就业能力，就得“学会编程”。但这个建议也许很糟糕。如今，担心工作被人工智能取代的是编程人员自己。

They might consider learning to philosophise. Earlier this year the FederalReserve 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.

也许编程人员应该考虑去学哲学。美联储年初发布的数据显示，美国哲学系毕业生比计算机科学系毕业生更具就业优势。就拿有数字可供参考的最近一年——2024年来说，计算机科学系毕业生失业率为7%，而哲学系毕业生失业率为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 "haemor-rhaging".

很多哲学系毕业生都被人工智能企业自身抢先录用。耶鲁大学哲学家鲁西安诺·佛罗里迪（Luciano Floridi）表示，哲学系学生还没毕业就获得工作机会。哲学院系学生换届也在如火如荼进行。佛罗里迪博士用“大出血”来形容哲学系学生离校规模。

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.

人工智能研究者可从古代哲学中获得一些启示。古希腊哲学家柏拉图描述的苏格拉底法则使用假装无知和连续提问的办法澄清意图、发现矛盾并查清影响。当前很多人工智能系统都有向讨好式方向发展的趋势。慕尼黑路德维西玛克西米大学哲学家约尔格·诺勒（Jörg Noller）指出，用苏格拉底法则培训的模型很少讨好人，而更乐于探寻真相。

Then there is the idea of "Socratic ignorance". In the "Apology", Plato has Socrates claim that his wisdom consistsmostly of being aware of how much he does not know. Implanting that humility into a model can help limit overconfidence, a common flaw that Dr Noller describes as "AI immaturity". Iason Gabriel, a senior philosopher at Google DeepMind, an AI lab based in London, attributes an industry-wide decline in hallucinations to such efforts. More broadly, he says, philosophy lessons are "a powerful mechanism" for improving long AI reasoning processes known as "chains of thought".

再说“苏格拉底式无知”。在《申辩》中，柏拉图让苏格拉底声称其智慧主要在于自己对事物无知程度的重视。将这种谦逊移入模型之中，有助于限制一种被诺勒博士描述为“人工智能幼稚”的普遍缺陷——过度自信。谷歌DeepMind（一家总部位于伦敦的人工智能实验室）的高级哲学家拉森·盖布里尔（Iason Gabriel）将整个行业幻想的衰退归因于这方面的努力。他称，更广泛来讲，从哲学获得的启发是一种“强大的机制”，能改善漫长的人工智能推理过程，亦称“思维链条”。

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, aphilosopher of technology at the University of Delaware, and it will favour 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 individual agency versus social harmony.

哲学化训练也可以更具体地影响模型的发展前景。特拉华大学的技术哲学家托马斯·鲍尔斯说，若用约翰·洛克的著作灌输一个AI法律助手，它会倾向于把强有力的产权作为政治自由的基础。如果你不喜欢这些原理，模型制造者还有其他原理可供使用。美国计算巨头IBM的“花岗岩”系列模型开发的拨号原理能使商业用户用其企业哲学更好地协调产出。IBM人工智能负责人佛朗西斯·罗希称，这些原理可以让用户就平衡哲学方面的权衡做出选择，比如个人自主与社会和谐。

Philosophy can help with safety, too. Researchers have documented all sorts ofominous behaviour 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.

哲学也有益于安全保障。研究人员对AI模型的各种不良行为进行了记录，包括尝试逃避监管，甚至盗取用户。模型制作人员大力提倡此类行为的一种方法叫做AI宪政主义，其中涉及建立一整套从具有法律或道德权威的哲学文本中挑选的规则。

Anthropic, an AI lab based in San Francisco, is one proponent. Constitutions for its Claude models have incorporated material from sources as diverse as Immanuel Kant, Apple's terms of service and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latest iteration, led by Anthropic's top philosopher, AmandaAskell, was published on January 21st. Some staff at Anthropic have nicknamed the 78-page constitution Claude's "soul doc".

总部位于旧金山的Anthropic实验室就支持这种方法。其Claude模型宪章融合了来自不同渠道的内容，如Immanuel Kant、苹果服务条款，以及《世界人权宣言》等。最新版本由Anthropic实验室首席哲学家阿曼达·艾斯克尔牵头，于1月21日发布。Anthropic实验室的一些工作人员给这份78页的宪章起了个绰号，叫“Claude的灵魂文档”。