2001: A Space Odyssey

“The book looks at humanity’s future, but it starts off right at the dawn of humanity. That’s one of the things I really like about it because…developments in AI are now prompting us to ask questions about who we are as humans and where we’ve come from. One of the dangers from some of the current discussions about AI and ethics is that it would be easy to think that we can just look at where we are now. It’s too easy to think that we’re in a very good position and have made a lot of progress, so let’s just make that progress a bit further. But what we need to do is to keep in view a long historical sweep about where we’ve come from and who we are as humans….In the novel, the spaceship’s computer HAL 9000 ‘goes bad’. The way in which the story unfolds is a really powerful way of raising all the issues that are being talked about now in relation to AI. I find the book, especially by being set in space, produces a striking depiction of the central ethical questions about our relationship with AI.” Read more...

Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Books

Paula Boddington