Nick Bostrom

Biography

Nick Bostrom is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, with a background in physics, computational neuroscience, mathematical logic, and philosophy. He is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute, a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Oxford which enables leading researchers to use mathematics, philosophy, and science to explore big-picture questions about humanity. Recently, the focus of the institute has been exploring questions regarding existential risks and the future of machine intelligence. The Future of Humanity institute works closely with the Centre for Effective Altruism .

In the beginning of 1998, the World Transhumanist Association was founded by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce. Its objective is “to provide a general organizational basis for all transhumanist groups and interests, across the political spectrum. The aim was also to develop a more mature and academically respectable form of transhumanism, freed from the “cultishness” which, at least in the eyes of some critics, had afflicted some of its earlier convocations.” The association has since changed its name to Humanity+. There were two founding documents of the World Transhumanist Association: the Transhumanist Declaration and the Transhumanist FAQ. The first document was a concise statement of the basic principles of transhumanism. The FAQ was a consensus document, more philosophical in its scope .

Bostrom is the author of the books Anthropic Bias (2002), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014). He served as an editor for the books Human Enhancement (2009), and Global Catastrophic Risks (2014). He has also published several journal papers, as well as contributing to books chapters, conference proceedings and articles. He is best known for his work in the simulation argument, existential risk, anthropics, impacts of future technology, and implications of consequentialism for global strategy .

He has received a Eugene R. Gannon Award, in which one person is selected annually worldwide from the fields of philosophy, mathematics, the arts and other humanities, and the natural sciences. He was selected to be part of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list and Prospect Magazine’s World Thinkers list .

He was born in March 10, 1973, in Helsingborg (Sweden). He grew up as an only child and didn’t particularly enjoyed school. He does not cite is parents as influences in exploring large philosophical questions. His father worked for an investment bank, and his mother for a Swedish corporation . When he was a teenager he had what he describes as an “epiphany experience”. In 1989 he picked up at random an anthology book of 19th-century German philosophy, containing works by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. After reading it, he experience a dramatic sense of the possibilities of learning and proceeded to educating himself quickly, reading feverishly, and painting and writing poetry in the spare time . He did not pursue these artistic endeavors, giving priority to his mathematical pursuits. He took degrees in philosophy and mathematical logic at Gothenburg University and completed his PhD at the London School of Economics .

Bibliography

Books

• Bostrom, N. (2002). Anthropic bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy. New York, NY, Routledge.

• Savulescu, J. and Bostrom, N. (Eds.) (2009). Human Enhancement. Oxford, NY, Oxford University Press.

• Bostrom, N. and Circovic, M. M. (Eds.) (2011). Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford, NY, Oxford University Press.

• Bostrom, N (2014). Superintelligence. Oxford, NY, Oxford University Press.

Selected articles

• Bostrom, N. (2002). Existential risks. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 9(1).

• Bostrom, N. (2003). Are we living in a computer simulation? The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211): 243-155.

• Bostrom, N. (2005). In defense of posthuman dignity. Bioethics, 19(3): 202-214.

• Bostrom, N. (2005). A history of transhumanist thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(1).

• Bostrom, N. and Sandberg, A. (2009). Cognitive enhancement: methods, ethics, regulatory challenges. Science and Engineering Ethics, 15(3): 311-341.

• Bostrom, N. (2011). A patch for the simulation argument. Analysis, 71(1): 54-61.

• Bostrom, N. (2012). The superintelligent will: motivation and instrumental rationality in advanced artificial agents, 22(2): 71-85.