Work is more than just a means of survival. | https://bit.ly/3MYEq0m Drawing on Heidegger’s metaphysics, philosopher @bs-rousse.bsky.social argues work is our main way of connecting with the world beyond our own minds.

I have a new piece of public philosophy out today in IAI News. My preferred title was "Why Work Matters in the Age of Automation." The editors of IAI News opted for one with a bit more philosophical flair. open.substack.com/pub/withoutw...

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. I reply to a reader's assessment that my writing about care didn't adequately capture his experience of caregiving for his aging parents. This provided occasion for much-needed clarifications and extensions of my recent explorations of care. Link in bio!

I recently gave a talk on the connections between AI, autonomy, nihilism, and how to live a meaningful life. Check it out !

My neon halo urges you to check out my new post: Why Care Matters for Al. A recent talk at the Computational Minds and Machines Lab at the University of Washington See it on YouTube and my post about it on Without Why. Let me know what you think! Links are biographical

I’m delighted to announce the Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project.

Punk is a response to technological nihilism. It creates meaning where the world increasingly withholds it. Read my last post of the year to see how. Link is biography.

The path of human flourishing is the path of giving a damn.

New post on my philosophy blog, Without Why! I share a philosophy talk I gave explaining why humans are not LLMs. Link is bio!

We are not on the verge of a post-human future of AI-automated work. Instead, we are entering a more demanding future where human involvement matters more than ever. Link is bio!

Every new tool we build is also building us. As we design AI: what kind of humans are we designing ourselves to be? Check out my new post, occasioned by an awesome talk Terry gave yesterday at the Topos Institute colloquium, "What's Up with AI." Link in bio!

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. I talk about the importance of helping young people develop skills for using AI to relate to the world in active wonder and inquiry, rather than passive consumption of “content.” Link is biographical!

New post ! Why doesn’t progress in LLMs does not easily translate into progress in robotics? It helps to connect back to Hubert Dreyfus’s observation in 1972 that “the meaningful objects among which we live are not a model of the world stored in our mind or brain; they are the world itself.”

New Post on Without Why! I discuss the recent conversation between Brendan McCord and Jonathan Bi at Cosmos Institute bout AI and human autonomy. I show that flourishing in the age of AI automation requires more than autonomy: it requires a revitalization of our capacities to care. Link in bio !

New post in my Heidegger series ! Link is biographical.

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. I sketch a phenomenology of care. Today we need to learn to care more about care. Check it out. Link is biographical!

Who cares about values? What are “values” ? What if they are an inadequate abstraction from our care? These are the questions i ask in my most recent talk at Topos in Oxford. youtu.be/VJZUZ37gj2Y?...

Went punting in Oxford, after attending an amazing seminar on “AI and the Future of Human Autonomy” in London, convened by Brendan McCord of Cosmos Institute and Liberty Fund. PS- check out the new post on my philosophy page, Without Why! Link is biographical.

This week I wrote a post on Heidegger’s notion of Dasein. To be Dasein is to be intrinsically susceptible to outstanding questions of worth, care, and mattering. Click the link in my bio to read more !

What if AI could help kids grow more curious, not more distracted? Join us for a 1-hour webinar on Monday, June 2 at 6pm PT to explore how AI can support wonder, connection, and lifelong learning—for kids and their grownups. #DigitalLiteracy #CuriosityCraft #TechForGood #EdTech #HumanCenteredAI

What do punk and philosophy have in common? How do they both open a space of meaning and care in our technological world? I share some thoughts about this in my post this week on Without Why. Check it out! without-why.ghost.io/philosophers...

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. I explain what I mean by describing LLMs as a “Frictionless Spinning in the Void.” Check it out! Link is biographical.

My new punk band REALISTIC is opening this show tonight in Oakland at the awesome Stork Club. Join us! Get there by 9pm or you will miss our set ⏱️

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. Link is biographical. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

My talk, “Language, Technology, & Care,” at Topos Institute, is now posted on YouTube. Check it Out and let me know what you think!

This Thursday, March 20, at 10am Pacific, I'm giving a public, virtual lecture on the topic of "Language, Technology, & Care." The abstract is in the second image. Link is in my linktree in my bio. Join us!

Giving a talk called “Frictionless Spinning in the Void: AI is not ‘There’” this weekend at the University of Kentucky. #artificialintelligence #AI #philosophy #Heidegger

AI aint’t got no body. Primordial embodied presence in the world is not an algorithmic function.

Today in Without Why, the video and audio of an interview that I did last year on the topic of “care, machines, and nihilism.” Image generated through Dall-E: “Here’s the retrofuturistic illustration of ‘Care, Machines, & Nihilism’, visually balancing warmth, structure, and existential void.”

Are you ontologically curious? Then this new post on my philosophy newsletter, Without Why, is for you! without-why.ghost.io/ontology-wha...

New post on my philosophy page, Without Why. This one is members only, but it’s worth it. Check it out! (Paperclip embrace” is an artwork based on an annoying and ubiquitous thought experiment in the AI-safety literature) Link is biographical. #withoutwhy

The overhyped AI chickens have come home to roost.

Hence the physicist quoted at the end: "There’s a big gulf between what it means to take an exam and what it means to be a practicing physicist and researcher,” he said. “Even an A.I. that can answer these questions might not be ready to help in research, which is inherently less structured.”

But one has to ask, how much of what we think of as "human-level" intelligence is captured by multiple-choice tests? www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/t...

People who work towards AI sometimes complain that the people who criticize AI always move the goalpost. Once a machine succeeds in a task thought to express intelligence, the skeptics say, "Well, that's not true intelligence" (e.g, beating a human at chess, or Go).

New Post in my philosophy page today! without-why.ghost.io/strange-fami... #Heidegger #phenomenology #existentialism

New post in my philosophy newsletter today. Check it out! Challenging philosophy for tumultuous times, written for maximum accessibility. Read it in 3m, the machine says. If you enjoy, please share it with a fiend! without-why.ghost.io/what-is-bein... #heidegger #phenomenology #ontology

New post ! without-why.ghost.io/getting-in-t...

I wrote a short piece called "What is ontology and why is it important?" Check it out! without-why.ghost.io/what-is-onto... #ontology #inquiry #Heidegger #philosophy #existentialism #phenomenology

This seems like a pretty balanced commentary. They certainly get this right: "connection between capability improvements & AI’s social or economic impacts is extremely weak. The bottlenecks for impact are the pace of product development and the rate of adoption" www.aisnakeoil.com/p/is-ai-prog...

An important narrative is gaining traction about the limits of “Scaling laws.” “The 2010s were the age of scaling, now we're back in the age of wonder and discovery once again. Everyone is looking for the next thing” (Sutskever) Here is a good overview: open.substack.com/pub/aisnakeo...

I've launched my philosophy newsletter! Check it out. In the "Welcome" post I describe my plan for the first year. It will involve, among other things, a section by section commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. without-why.ghost.io

My friend, Iain Thompson, has a new book out today about Heidegger and death, published by Cambridge University Press. Highly recommended! Iain's writings about Heidegger are worthwhile for beginners and scholars alike. (I got this snapshot from Iain's ig page) #Heidegger #existentialism #death

What made @caseynewton.bsky.social’s critique on AI skepticism so “disgraceful” (to quote @edzitron.com)? Since AI skepticism will a vital counterweight in the years ahead, I deconstruct it in depth here. With shoutouts to many of the AI skeptics he forgot. open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...

Becca Rothfeld's scalding and hilarious review of Jordan Peterson's new book is very much worth a read: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/1...