Resources: Ethics for AI and Robotics
Potential deployments of AI and intelligent robots raise ethical
questions about the impacts they may have on human well-being, just
like other powerful tools or technologies such as nuclear power or
genetic engineering.
Unlike other technologies, intelligent robots and other AIs have the
potential to act, and to be considered, as members of our
society. Since they will make their own decisions about the actions
they take, it is appropriate for humans to expect them to behave
ethically. This requires AI research with the goal of understanding
the structure, content, and purpose of ethical knowledge, well enough
to implement ethics in artificial agents.
This document collects useful resources for this research.
Resources
Books
A number of books have been important to me in developing an
understanding of the function of ethics as an evolved tool for
strengthening society by encouraging cooperation, via trust and
trustworthiness.
- Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, 1984.
- William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma, 1992.
- Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995.
- Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, 2000.
- Peter J. Richerson & Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, 2005.
- Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011.
- Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 2016.
- Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 2018.
- Allen Buchanan & Russell Powell, The Evolution of Moral Progress, 2018.
- Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny, 2019.
- Nicholas Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, 2019.
- Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History, 2019.
- Allen Buchanan, Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism, 2020.
- Michael Kearns & Aaron Roth, The Ethical Algorithm, 2020.
- Kurt Andersen, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History, 2020.
- Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (a novel), 2020.
- P. W. Singer & August Cole, Burn-In (a novel), 2020.
- Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 2020.
- Joseph Henrich, The WIERDest People in the World, 2020.
- Benjamin Ho, Why Trust Matters, 2021.
- Bruce Schneier, A Hacker's Mind, 2023.
- Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, Power and Progress, 2023.
- Cory Doctorow, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, 2023.
- Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave, 2023.
BJK