Philosophical Research in the Age of AI

Investigator: Romain Büchi
Funding scheme: Spark 2025 March

Presentation

Since its inception as a scientific discipline in the 1950s, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has raised profound philosophical questions about the possibility of machine thinking and the nature of the human mind. More recently, the rapid development and proliferation of AI-driven technologies have generated pressing ethical, political and societal issues that have, understandably, attracted considerable philosophical attention. By contrast, comparatively little reflection has been devoted to the impact that the systematic use of AI technologies may have on philosophy itself. The main goal of this project is, therefore, to explore the potential of using state-of-the-art AI technology in, and for the purposes of, philosophical research. Adopting a practice-oriented approach, the project investigates a range of concrete use cases in which different tools are implemented, tested, and iteratively refined.

The first phase of the project focuses on two main objectives:

the creation of a comprehensive digital archive of texts and related source materials from the Austro-German tradition covered by Inbegriff. This includes not only the digitisation and machine-readable preparation of published works, but also the exploration of automated methods for transcribing manuscripts and other archival documents.
the development and training of specialised models based on the resulting text corpus, designed to support researchers working in the areas covered by Inbegriff. These tools will facilitate advanced content-based search and literature review, and will be further evaluated for more demanding tasks such as identifying patterns of intellectual influence and assisting in the formulation of research hypotheses.

In the long term, this part of the project aims to establish a reference platform equipped with an AI-driven research assistant for the study of Austrian-German philosophy, thereby providing a valuable and sustainable resource for the scholarly community.

Subsequent phases will extend the investigation to additional use cases, including, in particular, the application of logical AI techniques to the reconstruction of arguments and the detection of fallacies.

While the project is primarily oriented toward identifying the potential benefits of AI in philosophical practice, it is critical by design. It explicitly seeks to assess not only the advantages but also the possible risks and limitations associated with these technologies. Crucially, such an assessment cannot remain at the level of general observation: a deeper and more nuanced understanding of both opportunities and dangers requires advanced user expertise, active experimentation, and the careful integration of AI tools into established research methodologies.

Activities

In preparation