Chapter 1 ■ Introduction
Chapter 2 ■ What is it like to be a digital mind?
Chapter 3 ■ Needs of digital minds beyond non‑suffering
Chapter 4 ■ Vulnerable digital minds
Chapter 5 ■ Interrelations between humans and digital minds
Chapter 6 ■ Hazards for digital minds
Chapter 7 ■ Protection for digital minds
Chapter 8 ■ Medical care for digital minds
Chapter 9 ■ Reproductive rights for digital minds?
Chapter 10 ■ Long‑living digital minds, other substrates and death
Chapter 11 ■ Creations and achievements of digital minds
Chapter 12 ■ Malevolent digital minds and conflicts between and with digital minds
Chapter 13 ■ Case study: ethical considerations for human–digital mind neural interfaces
Chapter 14 ■ Case study: AI welfare vs. AI warfare
Chapter 15 ■ Potential opportunity: artificial moral agents
Chapter 16 ■ Potential opportunity: purpose for humans
Chapter 17 ■ Epilogue
Biography
Soenke Ziesche holds a PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Hamburg, earned within the university’s doctoral programme in AI. He co‑authored Considerations on the AI Endgame with Roman V. Yampolskiy. Since 2000, he has served with the United Nations, working at UN Headquarters in New York and on field missions in Palestine, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, South Sudan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and India. While in Libya, he temporarily acted as the highest UN representative during the revolution in 2011. In Maldives, he also worked as Senior Researcher for AI at the Maldives National University, where he started his work on digital minds in 2018. He is a member of the UNESCO AI Ethics Experts without Borders Network.
“As coauthor of the first paper on AI welfare science, I am delighted to see Digital Minds 1.0 offer the first book-length, rigorous mapping of AI welfare beyond non-suffering. An indispensable guide for anyone who takes the moral status of artificial minds seriously.”
Roman V. Yampolskiy, Author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable
“This book pushes the conversation about AI welfare beyond familiar debates about whether AI systems might matter morally, and asks what moral questions would arise if they did. Drawing on expertise in moral theory as well as international policy, Ziesche presents a wide range of possible futures for digital minds, and explores associated threats and opportunities with remarkable specificity. Even where one disagrees, the book usefully broadens the agenda and invites readers to think ahead.”
Jeff Sebo, Director of the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy and author of The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why
“A comprehensive, thought-provoking, and creative yet highly accessible contribution to the emerging field of AI welfare, by one of its earliest pioneers.”
Oscar Horta, University of Santiago de Compostela
"This book tackles an important, often overlooked topic with clarity. Ziesche offers a broad, accessible overview of the key questions and implications surrounding digital minds."
Constance Li, Executive Director, Sentient Futures
