Your Professors
Barry Smith and John Beverley discuss the future of applied ontology with the APA
Image by Gerhard Bögner from Pixabay
Published August 7, 2026
UB philosophers Barry Smith and John Beverley are featured in a new interview with the American Philosophical Association exploring the growing role of applied ontology in artificial intelligence, data science and other fields.
In “Commercializing Ontology: An Interview with John Beverley and Barry Smith,” they discuss how ontology has grown from a specialized area of research into a practical field used in health care, defense, manufacturing and enterprise AI. They also examine the relationship between ontology and AI, including why clear definitions and structured knowledge remain important as organizations rely more heavily on large language models.
The interview also highlights UB’s graduate programs in applied ontology. Smith and Beverley describe how students combine philosophy and logic with knowledge representation, data science and technical skills that can be applied across academic, government and industry careers.