Wendell Wallach

• 1. A Quiet Birth In Torrington

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  Wendell Wallach was born on the 21st of April 1946 in Torrington, Connecticut. His mother Gerda Wilhelmina Lewenz had been born in Berlin during World War I to prominent Jewish bankers. She fled Germany with her husband Dr. Gert M.K. Wallach in 1938 and 1939 to escape Nazi persecution. They settled first in Goshen before moving to Waterbury where he served as Director of Health until his death. Dinner table contests between Shakespeare and Goethe defined their household culture. All five children became researchers or published authors. Gerda studied art history in Florence and later owned the Litchfield Gallery in Connecticut.

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• 2. From Spirituality To Silicon Valley

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  Wallach received his Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in 1968. He earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University in 1971 while also attending Harvard Divinity School. A stint in India followed where he explored spirituality and processes of cognition. This period shaped his early thinking about human consciousness before technology took center stage. He published his first book Silent Learning: The Undistracted Mind through Journey Publications in 1978. During the 1980s and 1990s he founded Farpoint Solutions LLC and Omnia Consulting Inc. These consulting groups served clients including PepsiCo International and United Aircraft. He sold his interests in both companies in 2001 after two decades of work.

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• 3. Teaching Robots Right From Wrong

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  In 2004 and 2005 Wallach taught undergraduate seminars at Yale University about robot ethics. He became chair of the Technology and Ethics Study Group at Yale University ISPS Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics in 2005. His co-authored book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong appeared in 2009 with Colin Allen from Indiana University. The abstract described it as the first book to examine building artificial moral agents. Wallach received the World Technology Network award for ethics in 2014. He won another World Technology Network award for media and journalism in 2015 for his second book A Dangerous Master. That publication argued technological development risked becoming a juggernaut beyond human control. He proposed solutions for regaining control of our technological destiny.

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• 4. Advising Global Institutions On AI

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  Wallach gave testimony at the United Nations Third Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Meeting of Experts in 2016. His testimony addressed predictability issues in lethal autonomous weapons systems. He later served on the UN Global Pulse Expert Group on Governance and Data of AI in 2019. This group called for responsible development of artificial intelligence to reach the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. He advised the Secretary General's Higher-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation which issued their report The Age of Digital Interdependence in 2019. The World Economic Forum appointed him to co-chair the Global Future Council on Technology, Values, and Policy for the 2016, 2018 term. He sat on the WEF AI council from 2018 to 2020 as lead organizer for the International Congress for the Governance of AI.

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• 5. Warning About Technological Destiny

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  A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control appeared in 2015 through Sentient Publications. It was republished by Sentient Publications again in 2024 with a new preface and examples. Wallach argued that technological development risked becoming a juggernaut beyond human control. He proposed solutions for regaining control of our technological destiny. In 2015 he received a grant from the Future of Life Institute for a project titled Control and Responsible Innovation in the Development of Autonomous Machines. He edited the Library of Essays on Ethics and Emerging Technologies where he co-edited volumes on Robot Ethics and Machine Ethics with Peter Asaro. Another volume emerged as Emerging Technologies: Ethics, Law, and Governance with Gary Marchant.

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• 6. Speaking To Audiences Worldwide

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  Wallach spoke at the Singularity Summit in San Francisco in 2007 under the title The Road to Singularity. His alma mater Wesleyan University hosted him for a WESeminar Series about Moral Machines in 2008. He appeared in Honda Dreams: Living With Robots directed by Joe Berlinger which debuted at Sundance Film Festival in February 2010. Business Insider featured him in an article titled We've reached a tipping point where technology is now destroying more jobs than it creates. He reviewed John Markoff's book Machines of Loving Grace in The Washington Post during 2016. Wallach spoke at Davos on a World Economic Forum panel about driverless cars in 2017 alongside Violeta Bulc and Carlos Ghosn. An MSNBC interview with Ayman Mohyeldin occurred in 2025 discussing the techno-industrial complex.

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