Rebooting the Machines: A New Human Vision for Artificial Intelligence

How do we ensure that AI makes the world better for us all, not just a select few?

Dr. Ayanna Howard, who works in robotics and identifies as a Black woman, is accustomed to the ways systems and networks tend to serve the few at the expense of the many. In her groundbreaking new book, she argues that AI, including robotics, is not built with a moral center. That means that if we want it to serve all humanity, we must provide the compass.

In this call to action around the moral and ethical questions surrounding AI, Dr. Howard offers the big ideas and practical suggestions needed to shape AI toward a moral and ethical role in the world. Most AI developers aren’t trained ethicists and don’t always think about the consequences of their creations. Thus, it is up to us all to think deeply about what we value as humans, what we want to accept as good (or good enough) choices in technology’s interactions with us, and to educate ourselves to ensure those values—the moral center—are programmed into AI.

Dr. Howard, whose AI and robotics research has been supported over three decades by some of the country’s top companies and organizations, has long been an AI optimist. In recent years, however, she’s seen a shift in the technology that makes her believe the scales of AI are shifting toward the dystopic. While she still believes in the good of AI, the AI utopia she has long envisioned is no longer possible without you—without all of us. In Rebooting the Machines, she reveals how we can all take an active role in shaping artificial intelligence for the good.