Philosophy Majors Are Hot
The joke on GIITD Podcast is no longer funny...because Philosophers and Philosophy majors and their unanswerable questions are what Ai companies want.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published figures showing that philosophy grads are more likely to have jobs than their peers who studied computer science. In the most recent year numbers are available, 2024, about 7% of computer science grads were unemployed, while about 5% of philosophy grads were.
Perhaps because of jokes like those previously made on GIITD podcast, philosophy grads are willing to take any kind of job they can. And the computer science grads are just holding out for jobs at the big Ai companies. However, that doesn’t appear to be happening. Because the Ai companies are hiring philosophy grads perhaps more than the computer science grads.
Back in late April, we reposted a post from one of our favorite Substackers, College Town, about how major Ai players have been hiring philosophy majors. Our co-host Rudy noted that the running joke on Good Is In The Details podcast is that philosophers are not employable because they ask questions that never get answered. Turns out, the critical skill of asking questions is exactly what Ai companies want.
Why? To better train Ai. That is, to provide Ai with a different approach than to just spit out an answer, even ones where they have to lie/hallucinate to produce an answer. On GIITD podcast, been arguing for years that critical thinking skills are the most important tool to sharpen in this Ai age. And it appears Google and other companies agree.