When Bertrand Russell wrote The Problems of Philosophy in 1912, he grappled with the gap between appearance and reality, asking how we can know anything with certainty when our senses may deceive us. Russell’s skepticism presumed that underlying truth existed and could be approached through rigorous inquiry. Over a century later, his questions have not merely persisted—they have proliferated into new domains of epistemic risk. Artificial intelligence does not simply introduce fresh uncertainties; it actively manufactures realities, fragments shared understanding, and operates at speeds that preclude human deliberation. In this landscape, the peril is not ignorance but epistemic surrender: the quiet abdication of judgment to systems that neither know nor care what is true. This paper revisits Russell’s inquiry in light of AI’s epistemic power, arguing for a renewed ethics of validation, provenance, and human oversight.
The Problems of Philosophy in the Age of AI
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