This overview of the ethical issues raised by artificial intelligence moves beyond hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions—offering a compelling, necessary read for our ChatGPT era.Artificial intelligence powers Google’s search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These a...

How AI is shaped by Western religious culture and universal existential aspirations—and why we think we need it in the first place.Artificial Religion argues that to fully understand our puzzling relation to AI, we must first look at the religious and existential background of our thinking about machines. Mapping some surprising connections between our history of thought about machines and Western religious narratives to political issues and existential hu...

Large Language Models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA, are not only the most disruptive and controversial technologies of our time, but also offer an unprecedented opportunity to examine human cognition and philosophically question the very nature of language, communication, and intelligence. What is consciousness? What is language? Are LLMs authors? Are LLMs the end of writing as we know it?In Communicative AI, Mark Coeckelbergh and David J. Gunkel offer ...

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engagi...

Political issues people care about such as racism, climate change, and democracy take on new urgency and meaning in the light of technological developments such as AI. How can we talk about the politics of AI while moving beyond mere warnings and easy accusations?This is the first accessible introduction to the political challenges related to AI. Using political philosophy as a unique lens through which to explore key debates in the area, the book shows how various political issues...

Introduction to Ethics of Emerging Technologies offers a set of lecture and seminar course materials for teaching ethics of emerging technologies. It covers the field in a comprehensive and accessible manner, emphasizing storytelling and examples, practical approaches and tools, and interactive assignments. The book addresses historical and current discourses, both academic and practical, related to the ethics of emerging technologies. This includes a basic introduction to normati...

A guide to the ethical questions that arise from our use of industrial robots, robot companions, self-driving cars, and other robotic devices.Does a robot have moral agency? Can it be held responsible for its actions? Do humans owe robots anything? Will robots take our jobs? These are some of the ethical and moral quandaries that we should address now, as robots and other intelligent devices become more widely used and more technically sophisticated. In this volume...

We are obsessed with self-improvement; it’s a billion-dollar industry. But apps, workshops, speakers, retreats, and life hacks have not made us happier. Obsessed with the endless task of perfecting ourselves, we have become restless, anxious, and desperate. We are improving ourselves to death. The culture of self-improvement stems from philosophical classics, perfectionist religions, and a ruthless strain of capitalism—but today, new technologies shape what it means to improve the self. Th...

Across the world, AI is used as a tool for political manipulation and totalitarian repression. Stories about AI are often stories of polarization, discrimination, surveillance, and oppression. Is democracy in danger? And can we do anything about it?In this compelling and balanced book, Mark Coeckelbergh reveals the key risks posed by AI for democracy. He argues that AI, as currently used and developed, undermines fundamental principles on which liberal democracies are founded, such...

Paul Ricœur has been one of the most influential and intellectually challenging philosophers of the last century, and his work has contributed to a vast array of fields: studies of language, of history, of ethics and politics. However, he has up until recently only had a minor impact on the philosophy of technology. Interpreting Technology aims to put Ricœur’s work at the centre of contemporary philosophical thinking concerning technology. It investigates his project of critical hermeneuti...

An account of the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs.Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism—understood as a reaction against rationalism and objectivity—is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technology (ICT) think about ...

This book proposes that technologies, similar to texts, novels and movies, ‘tell stories’ and thereby configure our lifeworld in the Digital Age. The impact of technologies on our lived experience is ever increasing: innovations in robotics challenge the nature of work, emerging biotechnologies impact our sense of self, and blockchain-based smart contracts profoundly transform interpersonal relations. In their exploration of the significance of these technologies, Reijers and Coeckelbergh ...