George Tsai

Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Faculty Affiliate, Center for Chinese Studies.

Much of moral philosophy focuses on hard cases and abstract principles. My work starts elsewhere—in the texture of ordinary relationships and practices, where moral complexity runs no less deep for being familiar. I examine how our social world scaffolds human agency, shaping how we understand ourselves and what matters to us—and what is at stake as artificial intelligence transforms those conditions.

My research is in moral and political philosophy and draws on both contemporary analytic philosophy and early Chinese philosophy. A central theme of my work is that ethical life cannot be understood solely in terms of right action or moral principles. It also depends on the relationships, practices, and institutions through which people become able to judge well, attend to others, take responsibility, and live well.

My current research extends these questions to artificial intelligence. I am working on two books. AI and the Substance of Ethical Life: Practices and Human Self-Understanding argues that AI raises distinctive ethical questions by making it increasingly possible to obtain the outcomes of human activities without participating in the activities themselves. Meeting and Managing: What AI Is Doing to Human Relationships explores how generative AI transforms our relationships by making it easier to manage them rather than participate in them.

I received my B.A. in Economics and Moral & Political Thought from Amherst College and my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley, I was an M.A. student in Philosophy at Stanford University.

My previous appointments include Dissertation Fellow at the University of Richmond (2010–11), Visiting Assistant Professor at Scripps College (2011–12), Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University (2013–14), and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2021).

Outside the university, I am a Senior Associate at Principia Advisory, applying philosophical analysis to questions of organizational ethics and leadership.

Before entering academic philosophy, I worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley in New York, focusing on mergers and acquisitions in the industrials sector.