The "growing market demand for ontologists"

Yesterday's posts were thinking-intensive. This one is mostly an excuse to link to this amazing press release (via this tweet), with a pull quote I can't stop rereading: "It’s a watershed moment in the history of AI and we’re here to meet the growing market demand for ontologists." Notes: This is the sort of thing that would have generated one heck of an email chain among the grad students when I was doing my philosophy Ph.D. Back when The Good Place was on TV, I remember not being able to decide whether it was more surprising that (i) there was a major sitcom set in a philosophy class or (ii) that such a sitcom was enjoyable. I don't mean to be snarking. Ontology is in fact very important, and academic philosophers are in fact uniquely positioned to do it well. I am not a labor market prognosticator; I'm just stunned and amused that this is all real. Really, getting the data model right matters a lot, and it's particularly hard for organizations to do, and you need good ontology to…