Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test.
26 Facts About Nick Bostrom
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Nick Bostrom believes that superintelligence, which he defines as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest," is a potential outcome of advances in artificial intelligence.
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Nick Bostrom sought to educate himself in a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, art, literature, and science.
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Nick Bostrom once did some turns on London's stand-up comedy circuit.
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Nick Bostrom's thesis was titled Observational selection effects and probability.
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Nick Bostrom held a teaching position at Yale University, and was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford.
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In 2005, Nick Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute, which researches the far future of human civilization.
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Nick Bostrom is an adviser to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
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Nick Bostrom argues that a computer with near human-level general intellectual ability could initiate an intelligence explosion on a digital time-scale with the resultant rapid creation of something so powerful that it might deliberately or accidentally destroy humanity.
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Nick Bostrom contends the power of a superintelligence would be so great that a task given to it by humans might be taken to open-ended extremes, for example a goal of calculating pi might collaterally cause nanotechnology manufactured facilities to sprout over the entire Earth's surface and cover it within days.
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Nick Bostrom believes an existential risk to humanity from superintelligence would be immediate once brought into being, thus creating an exceedingly difficult problem of finding out how to control such an entity before it actually exists.
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Nick Bostrom emphasizes that planning by a superintelligence will not be so stupid that humans could detect actual weaknesses in it.
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Nick Bostrom suggests nano-factories covertly distributed at undetectable concentrations in every square metre of the globe to produce a world-wide flood of human-killing devices on command.
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Nick Bostrom had pointed out that even if the crucial advances require the resources of a state, such a halt by a lead project might be likely to motivate a lagging country to a catch-up crash program or even physical destruction of the project suspected of being on the verge of success.
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Nick Bostrom has published numerous articles on anthropic reasoning, as well as the book Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy.
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Nick Bostrom believes that the mishandling of indexical information is a common flaw in many areas of inquiry.
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Nick Bostrom argues that an anthropic theory is needed to deal with these.
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Nick Bostrom introduces the Self-Sampling Assumption and the Self-Indication Assumption, shows how they lead to different conclusions in a number of cases, and points out that each is affected by paradoxes or counterintuitive implications in certain thought experiments.
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Nick Bostrom is favorable towards "human enhancement", or "self-improvement and human perfectibility through the ethical application of science", as well as a critic of bio-conservative views.
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In 1998, Nick Bostrom co-founded the World Transhumanist Association.
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In 2005 Nick Bostrom published the short story "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
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Nick Bostrom has suggested that technology policy aimed at reducing existential risk should seek to influence the order in which various technological capabilities are attained, proposing the principle of differential technological development.
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Nick Bostrom has provided policy advice and consulted for an extensive range of governments and organizations.
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Nick Bostrom gave evidence to the House of Lords, Select Committee on Digital Skills.
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Nick Bostrom is an advisory board member for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Future of Life Institute, and an external advisor for the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
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In 2023 Nick Bostrom issued an apology for an email that he had written in 1996 where he stated that he thought "Blacks are more stupid than whites", and where he used the word "nigger" in a description of what he thought people might think about the statement.