Applied Ontology Is Heating Up

As artificial intelligence transforms industries and careers, AI education relies on more than technical expertise. Increasingly, it requires skills such as critical thinking and ethical reasoning. In fact, The New York Times recently reported that philosophers are now in demand at top companies to address questions that are becoming central to responsible AI development.

Recent efforts at the University at Buffalo are helping push this trend forward, from a new, interdisciplinary department to several first-of-their-kind degree programs, each designed to prepare students for an AI-driven job market in a human-centered world.

In fall of 2025, UB launched a series of undergraduate degree programs that follow an innovative “AI + X” model, pairing artificial intelligence with fields in the humanities and social sciences, such as communication, logic and economics. The programs are designed to help students understand not only how AI works, but also how it affects people, institutions and the greater good.

The programs are part of a newly formed Department of AI and Society, a unique interdisciplinary entity focused specifically on ensuring that AI systems are designed and built for the benefit of the whole of society—by tackling real-world problems in the pursuit of progress rather than profit.

One year later, UB became the world’s first university to offer a doctorate in a field of study that’s proving to be essential to the development and use of AI systems: applied ontology. Housed within the Department of Philosophy, the new doctoral program, along with an existing master’s degree and undergraduate minor, prepares students to work and research in this high-demand and quickly growing field.

Ontology is a foundational philosophical discipline; by structuring otherwise unrelated terms and definitions, ontologists make explicit the implicit meanings buried across systems, drawing out hidden insights and new knowledge. Applied ontology uses the ideas and methods of ontology to integrate data and promote interoperability across computing systems.

“AI requires a firm and rigorous basis for the datasets used to train its models,” says John Beverley, director of the Applied Ontology graduate programs. “Because of that broad recognition in government and commercial spaces, there has been an outpouring of interest for applied ontology education.”

The fully online doctoral program is designed for students interested in original research at the intersection of philosophy, information science and emerging technologies. The master’s program suits those interested in standard practices that can be immediately applied in the job market. In addition to tech and AI, finance, banking, defense, health care and e-commerce all need ontologists.

“There’s a blanket demand,” says Beverley. “Every one of my students that wants a job in ontology has one already waiting, with entry-level positions often over six figures.”