Books
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Re-published by Sentient Publications, this paperback version of A Dangerous Master is updated with a new preface and a few new examples. As Wallach writes in the introduction: "A Dangerous Master is an introduction to emerging technologies: a little science, a little history, lots of moral dilemmas, and a good measure of entertaining stories. One question guided my writing this book: What do readers need to know to be able to join the fascinating debates about the technologies being developed?"
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Together with Colin Allen (Professor in the Department of History and the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh), Wendell Wallach published Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong (OUP 2009). Moral Machines explores the challenges inherent for implementing in robots and artificial intelligence sensitivity to moral considerations, and factoring these into choices and actions. Generally recognized as the first book to map this field of inquiry, Moral Machines has been cited more than 2000 times as of January 2025.
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What does an informed citizen need to understanding to participate in the exciting, serious, and consequential debates about the ethics and governance of emerging teaching? A Dangerous Master: How to keep Technology from Slipping Beyond our Control (OUP 2015) is a succinct primer written with that need in mind. Part science, part history. part philosophy and part ethics, A Dangerous Master is a transdisciplinary overview of the concepts, topics, and proposals that will be seminal in helping us navigate the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, neuroscience, and geoengineering. The narrative can be scary at first, as it introduces potential risks and undesirable societal consequences of new tools and innovations, but it pivots to focus on values and policy measure that will help build a future worthy of passing onto our children.
Promo video
(click the image to watch)
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Wendell Wallach was the editor for the full eight-volume series on the Library of Essays on the Ethics of Emerging Technologies, and also edited two of these volumes. Along with Gary Marchant (Professor Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law, ASU), Wallach edited and contributed essays to the volume entitled "Emerging Technologies: Ethics, Law, and Governance". With Peter Asaro (Professor of Science, Technology, and Media, The New School), Wallach edited and contributed essays to the volume entitled "Machine Ethics and Robot Ethics".
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Coming soon... Cloud Illusions: Moral Intelligence and Self-Understanding in the Digital Age
Do we, individually or collectively, have the intelligence to navigate an uncertain future increasingly contorted by climate change, geopolitical tensions, disruptive emerging technologies, and dysfunctional institutions? Cloud Illusions provides a history of ideas and evolving sensibilities in the seventy-five years since the end of World War II. Through a multi-leveled narrative framed by autobiographical vignettes, it proposes an evolutionary leap in self-understanding and a re-envisioning of decision making and ethics as the critical and necessary next stage in human development. |