Annual Royal Institute of Philosophy/UCD School of Philosophy Public Lecture

‘If you’re not outraged about AI, you’re not paying attention: Philosophy in the time of techno-fascism’

Professor Alice Crary, Walter A. Eberstadt Distinguished University Professor at the New School for Social Research and Visiting Fellow in Philosophy and Christian Ethics at Regent’s Park College, Oxford.

4:30–5:45 pm, Thursday 2nd October 2025

Venue: Theatre O, Ground Floor Newman Building

Summary

Since 2022, when large language models (LLMs) seized the world’s attention, and ChatGPT became for many synonymous with AI, a cohort of companies has argued that human-level general machine intelligence, AGI, is just around the corner. These companies obscure how they are responsible for grave social injustices and enormous environmental damage. Longtermists, a high-profile group of philosophers, aid the obfuscation, becoming complicit in serious harms. Today, we need to figure out how to philosophize, not in collusion, but in resistance.

Abstract

AI is myriad technologies that mutate and evolve, yet both the academic field devoted to its study and the industry that aims to realize it in its multiplicity are often said to have the nebulous aim of making machines capable of reproducing human-level, intelligent activity in most domains. The history of AI is narrated as a sequence of alternating “springtimes” and “winters,” in which progress is supposedly made toward this vague goal, only to falter. In 2022, the year large language models (LLMs) seized the world’s attention, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT became for many identical to all AI, a massive springtime bloomed, with a cohort of companies securing unprecedented funding while their leaderships argued human-level general machine intelligence, AGI, was just around the corner.

This familiar narrative, which has continued to be woven by representatives of Big AI, serves to obscure how, in competing to build ever-larger LLMs, AI companies became responsible for grave social injustices as well as for enormous environmental damage. Members of a high-profile group of philosophers, “effective altruists focused on the long-term future” or longtermists, aid the obfuscation by echoing the idea that AGI is likely close and arguing that trying to realize it is, morally, the most important and perhaps also the most dangerous endeavor for all humankind. In boosting the hype around AGI, longtermists became complicit in serious harms. Scrutinizing this tradition is a route to understanding what is being done to the world in AGI’s name as well as to figuring out how to philosophize, not in collusion, but in resistance.