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Playing God with Emerging Technologies

How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism

Playing God with Emerging Technologies cover

Playing God with Emerging Technologies

How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism

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Pre-order. Available 02 Oct 2025
$144.00 RRP $160.00 Website price saving $16.00 (10%)

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Description

Public debates over the morality of new or emerging technologies tend to devolve into false dichotomies of optimism versus pessimism. Playing God with Emerging Technologies: How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism provides a conceptual apparatus for engaging in such debates in a critical manner through the constructive lens of “playing God” arguments. Moti Mizrahi sketches a conceptual framework consisting of an argumentation scheme for “playing God” arguments along with Critical Questions. This framework can be used to analyze and evaluate “playing God” arguments as they are made in debates over the ethical development and deployment of new and emerging technologies, such as solar geoengineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, autonomous weapons, and more. Mizrahi argues that “playing God” arguments allow us to assume an intermediate and critical attitude between the extremes of hype and panic and to approach the governance of new or emerging technologies in ways that might help to increase our control over, improve our understanding of, and prevent our misuse or abuse of such technologies.

Table of Contents

Preface
Part I: “Playing God” Arguments in Theory

Chapter 1: The Ethics of New or Emerging Technologies
Chapter 2: “Playing God” Arguments
Chapter 3: An Argumentation Scheme for “Playing God” Arguments
Chapter 4: How to Evaluate “Playing God” Arguments

Part II: “Playing God” Arguments in Practice

Chapter 5: Are We “Playing God” with Geoengineering?
Chapter 6: Are We “Playing God” with Artificial Intelligence?
Chapter 7: Are We “Playing God” with Autonomous Vehicles?
Chapter 8: Are We “Playing God” with Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems?
Epilogue
References
About the Author

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 02 Oct 2025
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 176
ISBN 9781666964523
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 229 x 152 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Moti Mizrahi

Moti Mizrahi is professor of philosophy at the Flo…

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