About Me

Welcome! I'm a current PhD student at McMaster University.

My current research is on how responsibility for AI harms should be distributed among creators, institutions, and users, focusing on both discriminatory screening systems and large language models that are designed to invite misplaced reliance.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2022.

Following that I worked for the federal government of Canada before deciding to pursue graduate studies in philosophy doing first unclassified studies at UBC and then a masters degree at the University of Waterloo which I completed in 2026.

I am always interested in collaborating on research projects. Feel free to reach out!

Education

McMaster University
PhD Philosophy
September 2026 - Present
University of Waterloo
Masters of Arts in Philosophy
September 2025 - August 2026
University of British Columbia
Unclassified Studies in Philosophy
January 2024 - August 2025
University of British Columbia
BSc in Computer Science
September 2017 - August 2022
Conferred: November 2022

Research Interests

  • Philosophy of AI / AI Ethics
  • Philosophy of Language
  • Epistemology / Social Epistemology
  • Ethics / Moral Philosophy
  • Philosophy of Technology

Teaching Assistant Positions

  • PHIL 145Introduction to Critical Thinking
    (Spring 2026)
  • PHIL 228Ethics and AI
    (Fall 2025)

Conferences

Querying Omniscience: LLMs and the Pathology of Ideal Reasoners
World Congress on Logic and Religion↗
Large Language Models are philosophically useful not as approximations of omniscience, but as reductios of it; they show that universal answerability is not yet knowledge, and therefore that neither logical nor theological models of omniscience can be adequately understood as mere answer-totality.
(Upcoming) September 23rd - 27th, 2026

News

  • May 2026: I will be starting my PhD in Philosophy at McMaster University this September!
  • April 2025: Starting a new position at University of Waterloo this fall.

Contact and Links

Email: m2hinz@uwaterloo.ca↗

PhilPeople: matthew-hinz↗

U-Waterloo: Matthew Hinz↗