The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking by Professor Shannon Vallor

Headshot photo of Professor Vallor. She is smiling, wearing glasses with dark blue frames and hoop earrings. This image is overlaid with blue/green gradient on one corner and an image of her new book, The AI Mirror

We’re excited to highlight the publication of CTMF Director Shannon Vallor’s new book, ‘The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking,’ from Oxford University Press!

For many, technology offers hope for the future—that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome—not by us, but by our machines.

Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors, they reflect the same errors, biases, and failures of wisdom that we strive to escape. Our new digital mirrors point backward. They show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time.

To meet today's grave challenges to our species and our planet, we will need something new from AI, and from ourselves.

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

“Vallor knocks it out of the park with her sharp observations, apt metaphor, and surprisingly powerful call to action. Written with wit and charm, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in AI and our collective future.”
— Kate Darling, MIT research scientist and author of The New Breed

You can read more about Professor Vallor’s new book on the Oxford University Press website, or in one of these fantastic reviews: Publishers Weekly, Financial Times, Irish Independent!

There are a number of upcoming opportunities to hear from Professor Vallor on The AI Mirror:

You can also catch up on Professor Vallor’s work, by reading one of her recent articles:

The AI Mirror is available from Oxford University Press, Waterstones (UK), the Harvard Bookstore (US) as well as many local bookstores!

Research, NewsCTMF Admin