The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

Review

"Lucid and fascinating" -- Tessa Hadley, Holiday Gift Guide 2024, The Guardian"An essential guide for navigating our increasingly digital world." -- Carlos Lopes, Books of the Year 2024, Project Syndicate"The year's best critique of AI...a sharp, witty critique that shatters many of the prevailing illusions we have about âintelligentâ machines and turns some precious attention back on us." -- Alex Pasternack, Fast Company"Vallor knocks it out of the park with her sharp observations, apt metaphor, and surprisingly powerful call to action. Written with wit and charm, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in AI and our collective future." -- Kate Darling, MIT research scientist and author of The New Breed"The AI Mirror is the nuanced, introspective signal we need to cut through all the noise about artificial intelligence. Shannon Vallor is one of the most important voices we have to help us parse fantasy from reality when it comes to understanding the true threat that AI poses to humans: making us forget what it means to be human at all. This is one of the most important and poetic books we can read right now to find our way through the AI-hype headlines." -- Safiya Umoja Noble, Author of Algorithms of Oppression"Shannon Vallor has written the book I've been waiting for. The AI Mirror delivers a powerful reframing of the future of humanity and artificial intelligence. Vallor offers a brilliant and original perspective on how AI can reflect our noblest values and aspirations, as well as our worst fears and flaws. She challenges us to rethink our relationship with AI, not as a threatening technology or a neutral set of new tools, but as a mirror that reveals who we are and aspire to be. AI Mirror is a captivating and insightful book that will inspire readers to think differently about the dangers and opportunities of AI. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about what happens to humanity as we push our long-standing relationship to technologies to new places." -- Mary L. Gray, Co-author of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass"With The AI Mirror, Shannon Vallor offers us a transformative approach for re-envisioning AI. Sophisticated yet accessible, the book explains how limitations of imagination around AI distort our visions of what the technology can and should do. But it doesn't have to be this way. Ultimately, The AI Mirror is a work of hope-hope for building a future that enables collective flourishing and provides opportunities for repair and reclamation of our sociotechnical world." -- Karen Levy, Author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance"STARRED REVIEW: [A] mind-bending treatise...[and] a fresh and fascinating take on the perils and promises of a much-debated technology." -- Publishers Weekly"We would do well to listen to experts like Vallor... to discover how [AI] really works, rather than succumb to fantastical visions of the future." -- Alex Wilkins, New Scientist"[A] clarifying new book...The AI Mirror stands out for its witty, crystal-clear exposition of the real threat from AI." -- Becky Hogge, Financial Times"Vallor's style is readable and engaging... It's far from comfortable reading, but voices like Vallor's feel like a necessary counter-balance to the mystifying, self-aggrandising rhetoric of tech titans." -- Roisin Kiberd, Irish Independent"Best summer books of 2024: Technology: "There has been a deluge of books on AI this year. The AI Mirror... is among the most thought-provoking." -- John Thornhill, Financial Times"thought-provoking." -- Brian Clegg, Popular Science"An interesting and thought-provoking book." -- Ove Christensen, Kulturkapellet"A critical read for AI leaders and ethicists, entrepreneurs and investors, journalists and concerned coders." -- Alice Horrigan, New York Journal of Books"Vallor explores our relationship with AI, carefully unpacking her mirror metaphor. She claims that we are dangerously captivated - and also misled - by the image of ourselves that is reflected back by AI machinery. Remember Narcissus, she warns us." -- Sarah Richmond, LSE Review of Books "A work of human art and reads like poetry in places." -- Richard Lofthouse, QUAD"[A] wise and humane book." -- Ed Smith, New Statesman"Anybody who engages with the philosophy of technology should read this book, and one has to hope that it has an impact on public debates about what we are doing with technology." -- Mathias Risse, NDPR"Essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity. Vallor's arguments are rigorous yet accessible, drawing from philosophy, history and contemporary AI research. She challenges readers to see AI not as a technological inevitability but as a cultural force that we must actively shape." -- Claire Malone, Physics World"Shannon Vallor's The AI Mirror is a useful introduction to the various moral, social, and political problems raised by artificial intelligence (AI). Her deep-felt normative concerns deserve wider consideration by scholars and the general public alike." -- Robert Hudson, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science"Shannon Vallor's book The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of MachineThinking is a must-read for anyone interested in AI." -- Andrea Berber, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

About the Author

Shannon VallorÂis the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where she directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She is a standing member of the One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence (AI100) and former AI Ethicist at Google. Her work explores how new technologies reshape human moral and intellectual character and includes advising government and industry on the ethical design and use of AI. She is the author ofÂTechnology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth WantingÂ(Oxford, 2016).