The Hastings Center has appointed Wendell Wallach, an international expert on the ethical and governance concerns posed by emerging technologies, to be a senior advisor.

Wallach is a consultant, an ethicist, and a scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. He has chaired the Yale bioethics center’s working research group on technology and ethics for the past 10 years. He is co-author, with Colin Allen, of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong (Oxford University Press 2009), which mapped the new field variously called machine ethics, machine morality, computational morality, and friendly AI. His latest book, to be published this year, is A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control.

Formerly, Wallach was a founder and the president of two computer consulting companies, Farpoint Solutions and Omnia Consulting Inc. Among the clients served by his companies were PepsiCo International, United Aircraft, and the State of Connecticut. He has been interviewed and quoted often in leading news media, including theNew York Times,Wall Street Journal, and BBC News.

“Wendell Wallach has done more than anyone to help us recognize that we must take seriously the moral dimensions of artificial intelligence and of the numerous robots that are, and increasingly will be, a part of our lives,” says Mildred Z. Solomon, president of The Hastings Center. “His insights and proposed remedies will guide us into this new era. The Hastings Center has a long history of assessing emerging technologies to ensure their wise and compassionate use. We are extremely proud to have Wendell join us in advancing our ability to manage these new technologies.”