We’re delighted to announce the winners of the Essay competition on the Automation of Wisdom and Philosophy.

Overview

The competition attracted 90 entries in total (only one of which was obviously just the work of an LLM!), taking a wide variety of angles on the topic. The judges awarded the top four prizes as follows:

• $7,000 to Rudolf Laine for essays on wisdom, amortised optimisation, and AI:

  • Part I: Wisdom, amortised optimisation, and AI

  • Part II: Growth and amortised optimisation

  • Part III: AI effects on amortised optimisation

• $6,000 to Thane Ruthenis for Towards the operationalization of philosophy & wisdom

• $4,000 to Chris Leong for essays on training wise AI systems:

  • An Overview of “Obvious” Approaches to Training Wise AI Advisors

  • Some Preliminary Notes on the Promise of a Wisdom Explosion

• $3,000 to Gabriel Recchia for Should [...]

---

Outline:

(00:22) Overview

(02:19) Judge introductions

(03:55) Top Prize Winners

(04:12) Wisdom, amortised optimisation, and AI — Rudolf Laine — $7,000

(04:44) Summary

(06:07) BS's comments

(06:45) CN's comments

(08:46) DM's comments

(12:13) Towards the operationalization of philosophy and wisdom — Thane Ruthenis — $6,000

(12:21) Summary

(13:59) DM's comments

(17:02) CN's comments

(19:24) BS's comments

(21:38) Essays on training wise AI systems — Chris Leong — $4,000

(22:11) Summary

(23:20) CN's comments

(24:34) BS's comments

(25:11) Should we just be building more datasets? — Gabriel Recchia — $3,000

(25:19) Summary

(26:07) CN's comments

(27:56) BS's comments

(28:44) Runner-up prizes

(28:48) Designing Artificial Wisdom: The Wise Workflow Research Organization — Jordan Arel

(29:21) Summary

(30:31) CN's comments

(30:51) Philosophys Digital Future — Richard Yetter Chappell

(30:56) Summary

(31:45) BS's comments

(32:43) CN's comments

(32:59) Synthetic Socrates and the Philosophers of the Future — Jimmy Alfonso Licon

(33:06) Summary

(33:52) CN's comments

(34:08) BS's comments

(34:28) The Web of Belief — Paal Fredrik S. Kvarberg

(34:34) Summary

(35:57) CN's comments

(36:21) Wise AI support for government decision-making — Ashwin Acharya and Michaelah Gertz-Billingsley

(36:29) Summary

(37:35) CN's comments

(38:04) Machines and moral judgement — Jacob Sparks

(38:10) Summary

(39:02) CN's comments

(40:00) The purpose of philosophical AI will be: to orient ourselves in thinking — Maximilian Noichl

(40:09) Summary

(40:49) CN's comments

(41:12) BS's comments

(41:40) Cross-context deduction: on the capability necessary for LLM-philosophers — Rio Popper and Clem von Stengel

(41:50) Summary

(42:40) CN's comments

(43:40) DM's comments

(46:21) Evolutionary perspectives on AI values — Maria Avramidou

(46:27) Summary

(47:16) CN's comments

(48:05) BS's comments

(48:14) Tentatively against making AIs wise — Oscar Delaney

(48:20) Summary

(49:18) CN's comments

(49:53) Concluding thoughts

(50:21) BS's thoughts

(53:27) DM's thoughts

(55:50) AS's thoughts

(57:35) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

---

First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.