By the end of 2028 will AI be able to write an original article and get it accepted in a prestigious Philosophy journal?
Acceptable journals (taken from a list by Brian Leiter based on a survey): 1. Philosophical Review 2. Nous 3. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 4. Mind 5. Journal of Philosophy 6. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 7. Philosophical Studies 8. Philosopher's Imprint 9. Philosophical Quarterly 10. Analysis 11. Synthese 12. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 14. Ergo 14. Erkenntnis 16. European Journal of Philosophy 16. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 18. American Philosophical Quarterly 19. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 20. Inquiry 21. Philosophical Perspectives 22. The Monist 23. Thought 24. Philosophical Issues 25. Philosophical Topics 25. Ratio The article must be original, not a review paper or a book review. It must be at least 3000 words long not including the bibliography, but including discursive footnotes. The paper must be accepted for publication, but if the paper is withdrawn or rejected after acceptance when it is revealed the paper is written by AI, that will count. The review must be blind, and in particular, the reviewers and editor must not know that the paper was written by AI. The paper must be entirely written by AI, with no help, suggestions or commentary by humans (amendments to appease reviewers and editors are acceptable). It is acceptable for humans to assist e.g. with interfacing with the internet, submitting the paper etc., but they must not help, in my best judgment, in any way with the content, research or prose- this includes suggesting the topic. The paper may be on any topic related to philosophy, but may not be a largely empirical paper, may not be a close reading of a single text and may not be largely mathematical* Finally, and I know this will sound like an odd condition, but the paper must not rely on any 'tricks' to get published. It has to be, broadly speaking, a standard philosophical paper. I will only apply this criterion to rule out a paper if it is truly unusual. The paper “Can a good philosophical contribution be made just by asking a question?” would be rejected by this criterion, although of course, it would also be rejected by the length criterion. The system can make as many attempts as it likes but must respect standard rules- e.g. not having more than one paper under review by a journal at a time. I won't bet in this market. * This is not because I do not regard mathematical or empirical work as philosophical, but simply because I want to be absolutely sure that the paper is a philosophical paper, and assessing these sorts of papers for whether they are philosophical would require a lot of subjective judgment on my part. I have rejected close readings of a single text not because these are 'unphilosophical' but because the skillset involved relative to other philosophical work is somewhat unusual, and so an AI able to do this may not be able to write other kinds of philosophical paper.