Kant’s Cave: Philosophy & AI: Does AI Make Us Better Thinkers?

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Philosophy & AI: Does AI Make Us Better Thinkers?

Is AI making us better thinkers, or gradually doing our thinking for us?

Join Philosophy For All’s Alexandra Konoplyanik and Anja Steinbauer in conversation with Tom Berman, founder of RationalGrid, for a philosophical discussion about AI and its impact on how we think.

Much of the current anxiety around AI concerns cognitive dependency: if we increasingly turn to machines for answers, explanations and arguments, do we risk losing the ability - or even the inclination - to think things through for ourselves?
But is this an inevitable consequence of AI itself, or does it depend on how we use it, and how our AI tools are designed? Is AI a cognitive threat, or an opportunity?

We’ll explore questions including:

• Does outsourcing some cognitive work necessarily mean outsourcing our thinking?
• When does AI support thinking, and when does it replace it?
• Is the danger inherent in AI, or in the habits we develop when using it?
• Does the design of an AI tool shape the kind of thinking we do with it?
• Can AI help us notice assumptions, objections and possibilities that we might otherwise miss?
• What is the difference between receiving a good answer and actually understanding something?
• Could AI make us more intellectually passive, but also, if used differently, more questioning and reflective?
• What would an AI genuinely designed for better thinking look like?

Taking the risks of AI-assisted thinking seriously without assuming the verdict in advance, we’ll ask whether technologies such as general-purpose chatbots and tools specifically designed for exploration and critical thinking might affect our minds in importantly different ways.

And ultimately: does AI think for us, or can it help us think better for ourselves?

This event is sponsored by The Royal Institute of Philosophy.
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