The best books ever written about future technologies and the ethics of artificial intelligence

Why am I passionate about this?

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS University of London and Fellow of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. Among over a dozen honorary appointments all over the world, Adib-Moghaddam is the inaugural Director of the SOAS Centre for AI Futures.


I wrote...

Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity

By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam,

Book cover of Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity

What is my book about?

Through his research and analysis, Professor Adib-Moghaddam dissects the role of the so-called “tech-giants” such as Google, Meta, Twitter, and Amazon as well as influential figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates to unveil how their platforms contribute to the proliferation of various forms of extremism. From banking and health care to shopping, and social media, our daily lives are governed by various forms of AI that are polluted by discriminatory data. This is the first book to explore this nexus between AI technology and the scourge of racism and sexism that plague our techno-societies, especially in Europe and North America. This analysis of the data that feeds into AI technology offers a critical perspective on the potential ramifications for international security and human rights.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Open Sky

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did I love this book?

Virilio was probably the first philosopher to succinctly and concretely conceptualise the future, including what technology and AI do to our life.

The book is a straightforward lament for the disturbing loss of intimacy, democracy, and distance that our tech societies have brought about. The absence of space, personal and social, is probably one of the most dangerous side-effects of AI and of the most intrusive episode of technological development in human history.  

By Paul Virilio, Julie Rose (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Open Sky as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"One day the day will come when the day will not come." Bleak, but passionately political in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, Open Sky is Paul Virilio's most far-reaching and radical book. Deepening and extending his earlier work, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a "generalized accident," provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement in the context of global electronic media. But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy…


Book cover of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did I love this book?

Zuboff succinctly sets out, how AI technology is complicit in a surveillance regime that is at the same time opaque and oppressive.

She reinscribes a particularly threatening momentum into the ever-expanding culture of capitalism linking it to a new dawn of Orwellian control over our everyday life, which threatens our very subjectivity and the future of society as a whole. 

By Shoshana Zuboff,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The Age of Surveillance Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense.' -- Naomi Klein, Author of No Logo, the Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything and No is Not Enough

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us.

The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell…


Book cover of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did I love this book?

A book that established the clear link between algorithms and various forms of discrimination.

In particular, the empirical material marshalled here is impressive, which overshadows the relative lack of conceptual depth. As one of the first books on the subject matter, this is definitely a must read for everyone interested in the ethics of AI, as it started a necessary debate about the nexus between race and technology.  

By Safiya Umoja Noble,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Algorithms of Oppression as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms
Run a Google search for "black girls"-what will you find? "Big Booty" and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in "white girls," the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about "why black women are so sassy" or "why black women are so angry" presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.
In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search…


Book cover of Dialectic of Enlightenment

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did I love this book?

First published in 1947, this iconic book of the “Frankfurt School” could not be a study of AI and 21st-century technologies per see.

Instead it is a phantasmic explainer of how the mistakes of the past impinge on our humanity and the prospects for a better future. "What we had set out to do," Adorno and Horkheimer famously wrote in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

With spectacular erudition, the authors clearly show how the terror regime of the Nazis was rooted in the nefarious legacies of enlightenment Europe and its obsession with racial purity. As such, Adorno and Horkheimer presaged why it is that our polluted history feeds into racist AI technologies: Bad data, Adorno and Horkheimer would agree, produces bad outcomes. 

By Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Edmund Jephcott (translator)

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Dialectic of Enlightenment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle…


Book cover of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did I love this book?

A fantastic expose about the perils of Artificial Intelligence written with clear passion for a just and equitable AI future.

This book serves as an introduction into AI’s deep learning technology and its political effects. In easily digestible prose, it charters the ways that AI impacts society and how it feeds into various social predicaments, such as the rise of right-wing movements in Europe and North America. 

By Dan McQuillan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Resisting AI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can't be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people's life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. This book provides an analysis of AI's deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right.
Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic…


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Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

Book cover of Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

Patrick G. Cox Author Of Ned Farrier Master Mariner: Call of the Cape

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Why am I passionate about this?

On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required.  In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.

Patrick's book list on the Battle of Jutland

What is my book about?

Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.

When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.

Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

What is this book about?

The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…


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