AI Isn’t Just Technical, It’s Philosophical at Its Core

My primary background is in applied and computational mathematics. However the more I work with AI, the more I realize how essential philosophy is to the process. I’ve often thought about going back to finish my philosophy degree, not for credentials, but to deepen my understanding of human behavior, ethics, and how intelligence is constructed.

When designing an AI agent, you’re not just building a tool. You’re designing a system that will operate in different states such as decision making states, adaptive states, reactive states… That means you’re making choices about how it should interpret context and many other aspects.

IMHO AI was and still is at its core a philosophy of human behavior at the brain level. It’s modeled on neural networks and cognitive frameworks, trying to simulate aspects of how we think and do things. Even before the technical layer, there’s a philosophical layer.

Anyone else here with a STEM background find themselves pulled into philosophy the deeper they go into AI?