Book review - AI ethics by Coeckelbergh

 I just finished reading AI ethics by Coeckelbergh. This is actually course literature for a course on AI, digitization and archival science which I will start teaching next week at Lund University. The idea to include it as mandatory reading was from a colleague of mine, and after reading it through I think it has some very strong points as well as some weaknesses.

Amongst it strengths is the first chapters which deals with various aspects of AI such the difference between general artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence. It also highlights some aspects of machine learning and deep learning, which is of great interest to novices in the field. Even though I personally have a strong interest in AI, my skills in programming are not very strong even though I can read basic code and understand what it do. According to me it is therefore of importance to people wishing to learn how to utilise AI to learn of the different forms, since once you go deeper into it is important to know which form of AI you interact with. 

The book also have a very interesting philosophical discussion on AI were Coeckelbergh for instance discuss the ethical aspects of what responsibility is. Drawing inspiration from Aristotle it becomes clear that ai can never be responsible, since it is not aware of what it does. AI is thus defined as having agency, but not moral agency. Furthermore it also complicates the idea of moral agency since it is very unclear which of the actors around a AI system - I.e. developers or users - that have agency at any given time. 

The strengths of the books is thus that it highlight ethical aspects worth of earnest consideration. Like much literature on ethics it however suggest more problems than solutions. Another weakness is that it sometimes goes beyond the ai system and discusses the creation of hardware as an ethical complex aspect, which is true but perhaps should not be part of a book on AI ethics. All in all I still dare say that the work is well worth a read, both for those interesting in the general technology as well as the ethics sourrunding it. 

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