Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI

Toby Walsh: La Trobe University Press, $33

Whether you are barking orders at Siri or weeping in frustration at the automated telephone answering service, you’re using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Professor Toby Walsh explains how AI will only become an even more regular presence in our lives, so we might as well know what it can do, what it can’t, and what limits humans should apply. AI can recommend people from a pile of job applications, but we still need to ask who did the programming. Driverless cars, war without soldiers and identifying faces in a crowd are amazing tricks – but they’re also a dictator’s dream. Walsh reminds us that machines can gather data really well but they can’t think, so we’re in charge. ROBYN DOUGLASS