This is a fascinating and innovative take on ethics and morality within a framework of computers and artificial intelligence. It is an essay on the human condition taking in philosophy, psychology, politics, sociology, and, of course, science. The topics are deep and well argued but the book can easily be read by a layperson. There’s no academic grandstanding, just good writing.

The content ranges from patients in ITU’s being like cyborgs (and why is it more difficult to decide a course of action when asked "should we remove the machines and let her die?” against "shall we switch off life support and let nature take its course?”), through cows in India (because they’re sacred they cannot be killed therefore they’re left to have painful slow deaths), to robots in Japan (why do people in the west find realistic robots slightly creepy but Japanese people don’t?).

This is a stimulating, thought provoking read and it’s the sort of book you think about after you close the covers. I’ll be reading it again.

I was given a copy of the book by NetGalley.

It’s not easy to cover current topics or to discuss contemporary issues, since it misses a proper historic perspective and lack of data, or it’s difficult to produce them. At the centre of controversies, hopes, fears and popular research topic of scientific papers, research thesis and essays is surely the Artificial Intelligence, one of the many themes of “Animals, Robots, Gods”, Webb Keane’s last work. Keane covers the topic of AI in an innovative and concrete manner, giving them historicity and comparing them to other non-humans that people deal with every day, unveiling a soothing truth: this is nothing new. We’ve been dealing with superhumans, quasi-humans and non-human since ever, starting with religious and divinatory expressions; indeed, here, the AI are compared to some spiritual and animistic manifestations, such as the Oracle of Delphi or shamans. But it’s reductive to put AI at the centre of this gorgeous essay, because, here, Keane actually tries to explain how human beings build relationship with non-moral beings and with the Other, starting by animals, and with artificial lives, such as robots and cyborgs, which are not only related to science fiction, but they belong to the present as well (for example, Keane includes ICU patients and people in comatose state in the cyborg category), revealing that anthropology can be an efficient key to interpret our time. An original research and a well-written and fluid book. I’d have preferred that the author could go more in depth sometimes, but I consider this essay an amazing discovery.

In this short and accessible non-fiction book on morality, perception and life, Webb Keane makes persuasive and fresh arguments about ethically significant others. He draws from the experience of the carers of the dying, the first incidents with new machines, technologies, Hindu cow protection projects and many more along with the approaches in different disciplines.
This is a compelling, thought-provoking and open-minded read. One of the richest and diverse ones I have read on the topic.