A pair of philosophers have launched a contest in which participants submit essays that are “primarily AI-generated”. The aim of the competition is to “gauge the philosophical capabilities of AI in a way transparent to the philosophical community”. The team behind the contest, Elliott Thornley and Zachary Goodsell of National University of Singapore, have assembled a group of philosophers to serve as judges, and arranged funding for prizes ($3000 for first prize, along with other prizes). Here’s the announcement they sent along: AI is now exceptionally capable in mathematics and coding, but how good is it at philosophy? We are organising the first AI Philosophy Competition to find out. Entrants may submit up to three original essays on any philosophical topic. Essays must be primarily AI-generated, though some human guidance is allowed. Entrants must also submit a methodology report explaining how each essay was produced. The essays will be judged by a committee of philosophers including David Chalmers, John Hawthorne, Matthew Mandelkern, Rachel Sterken, Herman Cappelen, Branden Fitelson, Kenny Easwaran, Daniel Greco, Cian Dorr, Jake Nebel, and Christian Tarsney, with more to be announced. The prizes are $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for third. There is also a prize pool of $5,000 for creative methodologies, to be distributed as the judge committee sees fit. The submission deadline is 31 October 2026. Results will be announced at the end of January. The competition is organised by Zachary Goodsell and Elliott Thornley, and is funded by Forethought Research. Full details are available on the competition website. I understand that some readers may take my sharing of this announcement as some kind of signal that I am in favor of AI-written philosophy. At this point, I am not. While I think some uses of AI at the research stage could be acceptable and perhaps, eventually, advisable, for reasons I will explain some other time, I think there is something quite wrong-headed about primarily AI-authored philosophy. Nonetheless, I do think it is valuable to know what this technology is capable of, and so I’m sharing news of this competition. I do so even though there’s a risk that events such as this accelerate the arrival of a state of affairs I currently do..

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