New AI Ethics Book Series Tackles the Hard Questions of a Machine-Driven World

Artificial intelligence is no longer a speculative technology confined to research laboratories. It is embedded in the software that filters job applications, the systems that grade student essays, the models that generate photorealistic images of events that never happened, and the assistants that answer questions in classrooms and offices around the world. This integration has occurred at a pace that, by nearly all accounts, has outstripped the careful ethical deliberation that such transformative tools demand. It is precisely this gap between deployment and reflection that a new publishing initiative from CRC Press and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) has been created to address. The AAAI/CRC Press Advances in AI Ethics series is designed to provide a nuanced understanding of the ethical concerns and implications of current and emerging AI technology, drawing together leading researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the moral questions surrounding AI and to offer actionable guidance on using it safely and responsibly.

The partnership behind the series is significant in itself. CRC Press, a long-established publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books, brings editorial infrastructure and academic reach, while AAAI, widely regarded as the premier scientific society in artificial intelligence, contributes deep engagement with the field and its research community. According to the publishers, that combination is intended to ensure the series delivers cutting-edge insights into current challenges and a clear roadmap for navigating the future of AI ethics. The series is edited by Francesca Rossi, an IBM Fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader based in the United States, and Virginia Dignum, a professor at Umeå University in Sweden, two figures who have spent years working at the intersection of AI research, governance, and ethical theory. Their stewardship signals that the series is not intended as a collection of cautionary essays but as a sustained, scientifically grounded examination of how AI should be built, governed, and used.

Rossi has been candid about why she believes a book series, rather than another single-volume treatment, is the right vehicle for this work. In her view, the field of AI ethics does not lack books, but it can look fragmented, with many different assumptions about what the issues actually are and what it means to address them. The series, she explains, reflects a perspective she shares with Dignum: that questions about AI ethics are empirical and evidence-based, inseparable from governance, and best approached constructively rather than purely critically. That framing matters. It positions AI ethics not as an abstract philosophical exercise detached from practice, but as a discipline that treats claims about AI’s harms and benefits as testable, measurable, and subject to the same standards of evidence as any other scientific question. It is, as Rossi notes, a view that fits AAAI’s commitment to treating AI questions scientifically, and a series format makes it possible to carry that perspective consistently across multiple volumes over time.

The commercial and institutional logic behind the series is articulated clearly by Lucy McClune, Senior Commissioning Editor for Computer Science at CRC Press. In her assessment, the ethical questions about whether and how AI should be used in different situations are arguably more important than the technological challenges still to be overcome. That is a striking claim coming from a computer science editor, and it captures a sentiment increasingly voiced across the AI community: the hardest problems are often not technical but social, legal, and moral. McClune describes the series as aiming to address those crucial questions, providing what she calls an essential resource for researchers, students, policymakers, technologists, and anyone committed to ensuring AI serves a fair, just, and equitable society. The intended audience is deliberately broad, reflecting a recognition that decisions about AI are no longer made solely by engineers but by legislators drafting regulations, school administrators adopting new tools, and citizens encountering AI systems in everyday life.

The first book in the series turns to one of the most immediate and contested arenas of AI deployment: education. Titled Ethical AI and Education: Reality, Opportunities, Governance, and Consequences of AI in the Classroom, the book is written by Clara Hawking and Darren Coxon and will be published later this month. The choice of education as the opening subject is telling. Few domains have experienced such rapid and disruptive AI adoption as schools and universities, where generative models capable of writing essays, solving problem sets, and simulating tutoring conversations arrived with little warning and even less preparation. Teachers, students, and institutions have been left to improvise policies on the fly, often without reliable evidence about what these tools do to learning, motivation, and academic honesty.

Hawking and Coxon’s book examines the realities of AI in educational settings and covers the key ethical considerations facing educators today. Its scope runs from governance frameworks and accountability structures to practical classroom applications, addressing critical issues including bias, data privacy, academic integrity, and teacher agency. Each of these topics represents a live controversy. Bias in AI systems can affect how students are assessed or sorted, particularly when algorithms are trained on data that reflects historical inequities. Data privacy raises questions about what information schools collect on children, who controls it, and how it may be used. Academic integrity has been upended by tools that can produce fluent written work on demand, forcing a re-examination of what assessment is supposed to measure. And teacher agency, the professional judgment and autonomy of educators themselves, is at stake when decisions about instruction are increasingly mediated or influenced by automated systems. The authors pair this analysis with concrete strategies for building human-centered classrooms in an increasingly AI-saturated world, a phrase that captures the series’ constructive orientation: the goal is not to expel AI from education but to ensure it remains subordinate to human purposes and human relationships.

The second volume in the series has already been announced and shifts the focus from the classroom to society at large. The End of Reality: Humans in the Age of ChatGPT, Deepfakes, and Artificial Intelligence, by Mateusz Łabuz, is scheduled for publication in December 2026. Its title signals an engagement with what many observers consider the most destabilizing consequence of generative AI: the erosion of shared epistemic ground. As synthetic text, images, audio, and video become indistinguishable from authentic material, the question of how individuals and institutions can establish what is real becomes urgent. The book’s framing, situating humans within an age defined by chatbots and deepfakes, suggests an examination of how these technologies reshape trust, communication, and perception on a civilizational scale, complementing the first volume’s more institutional and practical focus.

Together, the two announced books illustrate the editorial architecture the series appears to be building. One volume addresses a specific sector, education, where AI’s effects are concrete, measurable, and already felt by millions of students and teachers. The other addresses a diffuse but fundamental problem, the status of reality and truth in an environment saturated with synthetic content. Both fall squarely within the editors’ stated method: empirical, evidence-based, governance-oriented, and constructive. This approach distinguishes the series from much of the existing AI ethics literature, which has often oscillated between utopian boosterism and dystopian alarm. By insisting that ethical claims about AI should be treated as questions to be investigated rather than positions to be asserted, Rossi and Dignum are effectively proposing a research program, one that AAAI’s scientific community is well positioned to advance.

The timing of the initiative is notable. Public debate about AI ethics has intensified as generative models have proliferated, and governments around the world have moved to regulate the technology through frameworks that address risk, transparency, and accountability. Yet the knowledge base informing these efforts remains uneven, and practitioners on the ground, from teachers to product managers to civil servants, often lack accessible, authoritative guidance grounded in current research. A sustained series that publishes regularly, engages leading international researchers, and connects ethical theory to actionable practice could serve as a bridge between the technical community that builds AI and the societies that must live with it. Whether it succeeds will depend on the volumes that follow, but the ambition is clear: to replace a fragmented conversation with a coherent, cumulative body of work.

For researchers, students, and policymakers wondering where to begin with AI ethics, the series offers a structured entry point that begins where the stakes are most tangible. The first book’s arrival later this month will show whether the editors’ vision of constructive, evidence-based AI ethics can be translated into guidance that educators can actually use, and the December 2026 publication of the second volume will test the series’ reach beyond institutional settings into the broader human question of what it means to know what is real. What is already evident is that two of the most authoritative institutions in artificial intelligence have concluded that the field’s most pressing challenges are ethical ones, and that answering them requires the same rigor, patience, and cumulative effort that science itself demands.

Subject of Research: Ethical implications and governance of artificial intelligence, examined through a new AAAI and CRC Press book series beginning with AI in education

Article Title: Crucial questions about AI ethics explored in new book series from CRC Press and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

Article References: Crucial questions about AI ethics explored in new book series from CRC Press and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: AI ethics, AAAI, CRC Press, Francesca Rossi, Virginia Dignum, AI in education, academic integrity, data privacy, algorithmic bias, deepfakes, generative AI, AI governance