A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence
A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy.

Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to be? If so, how is it changing the game? How is it likely to affect us as customers, tenants, aspiring homeowners, students, educators, patients, clients, prison inmates, members of ethnic and sexual minorities, and voters in liberal democracies? Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, this book offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. It covers the basics of AI's latest permutation, machine learning, and considers issues such as transparency, bias, liability, privacy, and regulation.

Both business and government have integrated algorithmic decision support systems into their daily operations, and the book explores the implications for our lives as citizens. For example, do we take it on faith that a machine knows best in approving a patient's health insurance claim or a defendant's request for bail? What is the potential for manipulation by targeted political ads? How can the processes behind these technically sophisticated tools ever be transparent? The book discusses such issues as statistical definitions of fairness, legal and moral responsibility, the role of humans in machine learning decision systems, “nudging” algorithms and anonymized data, the effect of automation on the workplace, and AI as both regulatory tool and target.
1137073810
A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence
A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy.

Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to be? If so, how is it changing the game? How is it likely to affect us as customers, tenants, aspiring homeowners, students, educators, patients, clients, prison inmates, members of ethnic and sexual minorities, and voters in liberal democracies? Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, this book offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. It covers the basics of AI's latest permutation, machine learning, and considers issues such as transparency, bias, liability, privacy, and regulation.

Both business and government have integrated algorithmic decision support systems into their daily operations, and the book explores the implications for our lives as citizens. For example, do we take it on faith that a machine knows best in approving a patient's health insurance claim or a defendant's request for bail? What is the potential for manipulation by targeted political ads? How can the processes behind these technically sophisticated tools ever be transparent? The book discusses such issues as statistical definitions of fairness, legal and moral responsibility, the role of humans in machine learning decision systems, “nudging” algorithms and anonymized data, the effect of automation on the workplace, and AI as both regulatory tool and target.
30.0 Pre Order

Paperback

$30.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on November 4, 2025

Related collections and offers


Overview

A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy.

Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to be? If so, how is it changing the game? How is it likely to affect us as customers, tenants, aspiring homeowners, students, educators, patients, clients, prison inmates, members of ethnic and sexual minorities, and voters in liberal democracies? Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, this book offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. It covers the basics of AI's latest permutation, machine learning, and considers issues such as transparency, bias, liability, privacy, and regulation.

Both business and government have integrated algorithmic decision support systems into their daily operations, and the book explores the implications for our lives as citizens. For example, do we take it on faith that a machine knows best in approving a patient's health insurance claim or a defendant's request for bail? What is the potential for manipulation by targeted political ads? How can the processes behind these technically sophisticated tools ever be transparent? The book discusses such issues as statistical definitions of fairness, legal and moral responsibility, the role of humans in machine learning decision systems, “nudging” algorithms and anonymized data, the effect of automation on the workplace, and AI as both regulatory tool and target.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262553926
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 11/04/2025
Pages: 232
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

John Zerilli is a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in the University of Cambridge and from 2021 will be a Leverhulme Trust Fellow at the University of Oxford.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“With the explosive expansion of cloud computing capacity, mobile communication technologies, and the internet of things over the past couple of decades, AI systems have become an increasingly unavoidable—indeed pervasive—part of our everyday lives. And yet, many of us have very little idea of how these technologies actually work, or of where, when, and how they are being used by law enforcement agencies, private companies, and governments. The authors of A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence do a masterful job of opening a public conversation that promises to redress this troubling knowledge gap. The book casts an interdisciplinary floodlight on how algorithmic tools are being used in areas ranging from health care, law, and social services to social media and business, and it explains the basic technical components of AI in a jargon-free manner. Likewise, it broaches many of the crucial ethical issues surrounding AI applications such as privacy, bias, accountability and autonomy in an equally clear and accessible way. This work is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the moral, legal, political, and economic stakes of the use of AI systems in a connected human world increasingly, though often unwittingly, entangled in such technologies.”
David Leslie, Ethics Team Lead, Alan Turing Institute

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews