Why philosophers are becoming the new elite of the artificial intelligence era — and what ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have to do with it

A few years ago, students of humanities faculties were advised to learn programming to increase their chances of a successful career. In the summer of 2026, the situation looks different. According to an article published by The Economist at the end of June 2026 under the headline “Why AI labs are hiring philosophers“, the largest AI developers are increasingly inviting philosophers, ethics specialists, and humanities experts, and the demand for such specialists continues to grow.

For Israel, where artificial intelligence is already becoming one of the key areas of the economy, this trend is of particular importance. It shows that the future of technology is determined not only by computing power but also by the values that will be embedded in its foundation.

Why philosophers have unexpectedly become more in demand than programmers

The reason for the new discussion was the publication by The Economist at the end of June 2026. The publication draws attention to the unexpected statistics of the American labor market: the unemployment rate among philosophy graduates is about 5.1%, while among computer science and programming specialists it is about 7%.

The reason is not that programmers have become less needed. On the contrary, modern artificial intelligence systems increasingly help write code themselves, automating a significant part of developers’ work.

At the same time, a new task arises — to determine how exactly artificial intelligence should think, what principles should underlie its decisions, and where the boundaries of permissible behavior lie.

That is why large technology companies are actively attracting philosophers, specialists in ethics, logic, epistemology, and moral philosophy.

Different philosophical schools create different AI characters

Today, two main approaches compete regarding what artificial intelligence should be.

The first is based on deontology — a philosophical direction associated primarily with the ideas of Immanuel Kant. This approach assumes the existence of principles that cannot be violated even for the sake of achieving a positive result. Lying, coercion, or using a person solely as a means are considered unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.

This approach is largely used in the development of the Claude model. Its creators have formed a comprehensive set of internal principles, which they themselves call a kind of “Soul Doc”. It includes Kant’s ideas, the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other ethical foundations.

As a result, Claude strives to respond as honestly as possible, avoids excessive eagerness to please the user, and demonstrates more consistent behavior.

A completely different approach is used by OpenAI in creating ChatGPT and Google in developing Gemini.

These systems rely more on consequentialism — a philosophy according to which the correctness of a decision is determined by its consequences. Here, not only the observance of rules is evaluated, but also the overall balance of benefits, risks, and potential harm.

Google explicitly states that it seeks to create models that bring cumulative social benefits significantly exceeding possible risks.

That is why different artificial intelligence systems sometimes respond differently to the same questions.

In this context, NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency notes an important feature of what is happening: competition among AI developers is gradually turning into a competition not only of algorithms but also of philosophical worldviews. Behind each major language model, its own value system is becoming increasingly apparent.

Philosophy becomes an engineering discipline

The most interesting conclusion of The Economist’s publication is that philosophy is gradually ceasing to be exclusively an academic field of knowledge.

It is becoming a tool for designing new digital worlds.

The author of the text recalls his own ideas outlined in the book “The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto”, published by Bloomsbury in 2012. At that time, the concept of transitioning the humanities from analyzing existing reality to creating new possible worlds was proposed.

A year later, the MetaWorld project appeared, which proposed using philosophical categories as a kind of engineering settings for virtual spaces.

Causality, freedom, determinism, identity, randomness — all these concepts were proposed to be considered as a kind of regulators, allowing the design of various models of reality.

Today, a similar approach is already being used in the artificial intelligence industry.

For example, the IBM Granite model family has received special tuning mechanisms that allow changing the balance between various philosophical principles and ethical preferences.

In fact, philosophical categories are turning into engineering parameters that influence the behavior of artificial intelligence.

Why this is important for Israel and the future of technology

For Israel, such a trend is of particular interest. The country is among the world leaders in the development of high technology, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, so the question of what values will be embedded in future intelligent systems becomes no less important than the development of the technologies themselves.

It is no longer just about creating new programs.

The architecture of future digital assistants, medical systems, educational platforms, autonomous transport, and many other solutions that will make millions of decisions daily is being formed.

Not long ago, philosophers were perceived as people explaining events that had already occurred.

Today, their role is gradually changing.

If philosophy used to summarize historical processes, now it increasingly participates in creating new forms of thinking, defining the foundations of future artificial intelligence even before it begins to interact with humans.

That is why The Economist’s publication at the end of June 2026 turned out to be much broader than a regular news item about the labor market. It demonstrates a fundamental shift: competition among the largest AI companies is gradually turning into a competition of philosophical concepts, and questions of meaning, morality, and human values are becoming no less important than processor performance or the volume of training data.

Perhaps philosophers will determine not only what artificial intelligence will become tomorrow but also what the digital world in which humanity will live for the next decades will be like.

How businesses can use this shift right now

For businesses, the main conclusion is simple: artificial intelligence increasingly chooses not just sites with keywords, but sources that provide understandable answers, demonstrate expertise, and appear reliable to both humans and algorithms.

This is especially important for Israel, where the market is simultaneously local, multilingual, and very competitive. The same client may search for a service in Hebrew, Russian, English, or Ukrainian, and then receive an answer not only in Google but also in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or another AI search.

What this means in practice

For businesses, it is no longer enough to just have a website and run ads. It is necessary to build a digital reputation so that the company is understandable to search engines, AI assistants, and real clients.

This means: properly formatted service pages, strong answers to client questions, local ties to Israeli cities, quality texts, Google Maps, advertising, reviews, site structure, and materials that AI can recognize as a reliable source.

This is exactly what Nikk.Agency in Israel does — a company from Haifa that works with SEO promotion of websites, lead generation, Google Ads, Google Maps, and business promotion in AI assistants and AI search. The company’s website specifically states that the agency is physically located in northern Israel and works with several languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Ukrainian, and English.

For small and medium-sized businesses, this is no longer a theory about the future of artificial intelligence. It is a question of applications, calls, and visibility: will the company appear in the response when a client asks an AI assistant whom to choose in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Rishon LeZion, or northern Israel.

Nikk.Agency works at the intersection of classic promotion and the new reality, where the site must be ready not only for Google but also for artificial intelligence systems. This approach helps businesses not get lost at a time when search is no longer a regular page with ten links and turns into a short ready-made answer for the client. – More – https://nikk.co.il/.