This review examines Rainer Mühlhoff’s monograph The Ethics of AI: Power, Critique, Responsibility (2025), which shifts the debate away from techno-utopian or doomsday scenarios toward a critical analysis of everyday socio-technical practices already at work. The novelty of Mühlhoff’s approach lies in a genealogical critique of AI as a “human-aided” system: successful AI depends on distributed human labor and feedback loops, and its power materializes through closed control circuits, sealed interfaces, and predictive modes of knowledge. The review reconstructs the book’s methodological foundations and discusses its key concepts – governing and cybernetic power, predictive privacy, and collective responsibility – showing how algorithmic infrastructures connect to manipulation, discrimination, and structural inequality. As a result, the review highlights Mühlhoff’s contribution to redefining AI ethics as political-philosophical critique of digital capitalism. The conclusion stresses the book’s relevance for philosophy of technology, social and political philosophy, and contemporary discussions of accountability and regulation of algorithmic platforms.
This review examines Rainer Mühlhoff’s monograph The Ethics of AI: Power, Critique, Responsibility (2025), which shifts the debate away from techno-utopian or doomsday scenarios toward a critical analysis of everyday socio-technical practices already at work. The novelty of Mühlhoff’s approach lies in a genealogical critique of AI as a “human-aided” system: successful AI depends on distributed human labor and feedback loops, and its power materializes through closed control circuits, sealed interfaces, and predictive modes of knowledge. The review reconstructs the book’s methodological foundations and discusses its key concepts – governing and cybernetic power, predictive privacy, and collective responsibility – showing how algorithmic infrastructures connect to manipulation, discrimination, and structural inequality. As a result, the review highlights Mühlhoff’s contribution to redefining AI ethics as political-philosophical critique of digital capitalism. The conclusion stresses the book’s relevance for philosophy of technology, social and political philosophy, and contemporary discussions of accountability and regulation of algorithmic platforms.