The Philosopher Inside the Machine
Grammar: Professional register — nominalisation, passive voice, and hedged opinion structures
A Business English English lesson exploring technology.
What's in this lesson
A Business English ESL lesson on technology, practising professional register — nominalisation, passive voice, and hedged opinion structures. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary and discussion questions.
From the reading: The Philosopher Inside the Machine
In 2017, a political philosopher named Iason Gabriel made an unusual career move. He left a fellowship at Oxford's St John's College — where he taught political theory and wrote about the ethical blind spots of effective altruism — to join DeepMind, Google's AI research subsidiary in London. At the time, he was the only active philosopher working at a frontier AI laboratory anywhere in the world. The appointment raised an obvious question: what does a moral philosopher actually do inside a technology company?
Vocabulary
- at some level
- broaden the horizons
- hard to overstate
- raised an obvious question
- at
- between
- by
- for
- in
- of
Discussion questions
- Should technology companies employ philosophers?
- Can a machine ever make a genuinely ethical decision?
- What career skills do you think AI development most urgently needs right now?
The Philosopher Inside the Machine
Grammar: Professional register — nominalisation, passive voice, and hedged opinion structures
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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