The Ethics of AI : Power, Critique, Responsibility / Rainer Mühlhoff.

Front Cover -- The Ethics of AI: Power, Critique, Responsibility -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- About the Author -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: What Does It Mean to 'Do' a Power-.Aware Ethics of AI? A Note to Readers -- Structure of the book -- Subjectivity and power in contemporary AI -- Contemporary AI as prediction power -- AI and social structures -- Collective responsibility -- Intervening in the ethics of AI: a systematic delineation of the power-.aware approach -- Part I The Power of AI -- 1 What AI Are We Talking About? -- Human-computer interaction and 'genius AI' -- Ethics of AI beyond anthropomorphism -- Contemporary AI systems as hybrid computing networks -- 2 Human-Aided AI -- The first thesis of Human-Aided AI -- Example: Facebook's DeepFace project -- The second thesis of Human-Aided AI -- Click-work -- Commercial content moderation and the social costs of click-work -- The third thesis of Human-Aided AI -- AI extractivism and digital colonialism -- 3 Digital Counter-Enlightenment and the Power of Design -- AI in the history of networked media -- Interface nudges and digital choice architectures -- The Web as a real-time behavioural laboratory -- Sealed surfaces and the demobilisation of instrumentality -- Subjectivity of digital counter-enlightenment -- 4 Subjectivity and Power in the Ethics of AI -- The reproduction of Human-Aided AI -- AI extractivism revisited -- Systemic critique and ethics beyond individualism -- Part II The Power of Prediction -- 5 AI systems as Prediction Machines -- Predictive analytics: functional characterisation -- The dual business model of digital media -- Targeted advertising -- Case study: psychological targeting in election campaigns -- Prediction power -- Putting election campaigns aside, isn't personalised advertising harmless in most cases?.

6 Predictive Privacy -- A new form of privacy violation -- The concept of predictive privacy (first definition) -- Collective harms: our data affect others -- Predictive privacy as a collective interest (second definition) -- Regulating prediction power: why we need a preventive approach -- 7 The Culture of Prediction: Ethics and Epistemology -- Inference vs prediction: the prediction gap -- Frequentist vs Bayesian probability -- The new culture of algorithmic modelling -- Automating Sherlock Holmes and the ethics of statistical reasoning -- Part III The Power of Control -- 8 AI Cybernetics -- A brief genealogy of predictive targeting in the history of cybernetics -- Cybernetics of social structures, or the performativity of predictive AI -- Control power: manipulation and discrimination -- The cybernetic leviathan? -- 9 Opacity in Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics -- The demise of explainability -- Predictive performance as the new truth -- Case-.based vs system-.level explainability -- Two demands of explainability -- Ethics at the end of theory -- 10 Bias in Cybernetic AI Systems -- First- vs second-degree bias -- Biased feasibility of feedback loops -- 11 Collective Responsibility in the Ethics of AI -- Collective responsibility without responsibilisation -- political action without paternalism -- Ethics of AI as digital enlightenment -- Conclusion: Manifesto for a Power-.Aware Ethics of AI -- What concept of AI we use is an ethical and political, not an objective question -- The ethics of AI needs to forge an alliance with social philosophy and critical theories -- The assemblage perspective on AI is not an alternative ontology but an ethical stance -- Working in the ethics of AI requires cultivating an ethos of seeing power structures -- Ethics needs a two-step methodology that proceeds from critique to normativity.

An ethics of AI must engage in political debate and avoid falling prey to 'ethics washing' and techno-fixes -- We must adopt a critical anthropocentrism in the ethics of AI -- Responsibility is greater than instrumental control -- Notes -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Bibliography -- Index.

The book Ethics of AI: Power, Critique, Responsibility by Rainer Mühlhoff offers a critical examination of artificial intelligence (AI) and its deep entanglement with power structures in the digital era. It challenges the prevailing discourse on AI, framing it not as an apolitical tool but as a sociotechnical system that perpetuates exploitation, inequality and manipulation on a global scale. Through a power-aware lens, the book addresses the ethical implications of AI by highlighting collective responsibility, rejecting individualistic moral agency and advocating for systemic change through political regulation. Mühlhoff integrates critical theory, political philosophy and the detailed discussion of examples based on profound technical insight to deconstruct AI’s societal impacts, and calls for a new ethics that emphasises collective political action over technological solutionism.