--- title: Philosophy of AI & Technology description: Philosophy of technology asks what machines can know, feel and owe us. You will learn debates on machine consciousness, the ethics of automation, technology's effect on society and the key thinkers. category: social-sciences subcategory: philosophy difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/philosophy-of-ai-and-technology --- # Philosophy of AI & Technology Philosophy of technology asks what machines can know, feel and owe us. You will learn debates on machine consciousness, the ethics of automation, technology's effect on society and the key thinkers. ## Available Resources 1 Books • 3 Websites • 1 Papers ## Books ### 1. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting **Author:** Shannon Vallor Academic book arguing that fast-changing technologies call for cultivated moral character rather than fixed rules. It draws on Aristotelian, Confucian and Buddhist virtue ethics and applies them to social media, surveillance, robots and human enhancement. A serious, non-hype monograph that gives a constructive ethical framework for living with technology. It is the deep end of the path. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/019090528X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** virtue-ethics, technology-ethics, confucian-ethics, surveillance, human-enhancement, moral-character ## Websites ### 1. Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) **Author:** Vincent C. Müller Encyclopedia survey of the main ethical debates about AI and robots: privacy and surveillance, manipulation, opacity, bias, human-robot interaction, autonomous weapons, the moral status of machines, superintelligence, and automation's effect on work. The most authoritative free map of 'what machines owe us / we owe them'. Its bibliography is a ready-made advanced reading list. Revised March 2026. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/ **Tags:** ai-ethics, robot-ethics, algorithmic-bias, autonomous-weapons, machine-moral-status, superintelligence ### 2. The Chinese Room Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) **Author:** David Cole Encyclopedia entry on Searle's 1980 thought experiment claiming that running a program cannot produce understanding. It sets out the systems, robot, brain-simulator, virtual-mind and other-minds replies, the syntax-versus-semantics debate, and its bearing on large language models (revised 2024). **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ **Tags:** chinese-room, john-searle, philosophy-of-mind, machine-understanding, syntax-vs-semantics, strong-ai ### 3. Philosophy of Technology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) **Author:** Maarten Franssen, Gert-Jan Lokhorst, Ibo van de Poel Peer-reviewed encyclopedia survey of the field. It covers humanities and analytic traditions, technology's relation to science, design and artifacts, and the ethics and politics of technology: agency, control, risk and power. The best free map of the whole field, so it works as an entry point before the AI-specific material. It also covers Heidegger, Winner and the value-ladenness debate, which means no separate resource is needed for each. Substantively revised July 2026. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/technology/ **Tags:** philosophy-of-technology, technology-ethics, heidegger, value-ladenness, design-and-artifacts ## Papers ### 1. Computing Machinery and Intelligence **Author:** Alan M. Turing Turing's 1950 Mind paper, which asks whether machines can think and proposes the imitation game (Turing test). It answers nine objections, including the theological, consciousness and Lady Lovelace objections, and sketches learning machines. Easy to read and short, and it sets up every later debate. Full text, 22 pages. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf **Tags:** alan-turing, turing-test, imitation-game, machine-intelligence, philosophy-of-mind --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/philosophy-of-ai-and-technology