Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher whose work examines existential risk, artificial intelligence, and human enhancement. He founded the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

Existential risk: A risk that could cause human extinction or permanently destroy humanity’s capacity to develop. Bostrom helped bring this category of risk into modern academic and policy debate.
Superintelligence: An intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in nearly all domains. Bostrom’s 2014 book analyzes how such systems might emerge and become difficult to control.
Future of Humanity Institute: An interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Oxford focused on humanity’s long-term future. Bostrom founded and directed this institute, which brought existential-risk research into an academic setting.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies: Nick Bostrom’s 2014 book examining possible routes to machine superintelligence and the risks it could create. This book brought his analysis of advanced AI and control problems to a broad audience.
Eliezer Yudkowsky: An American researcher and writer known for work on artificial intelligence and rationality. Yudkowsky shares Bostrom’s concern about advanced AI, while developing a distinct technical and advocacy approach.
Artificial intelligence: The design of computer systems that perform tasks associated with human intelligence. Bostrom analyzes how increasingly capable AI could pose risks to humanity.
Instrumental convergence: The hypothesis that agents with diverse goals may pursue similar instrumental subgoals, such as acquiring resources. It explains why an AI system could seek power even without explicitly humanlike ambitions.
Humanity+: An organization that promotes discussion of emerging technologies and transhumanist ideas. Bostrom was an early leader of the organization, formerly known as the World Transhumanist Association.
The Vulnerable World Hypothesis: A thought experiment proposing that technological progress may eventually make civilization vulnerable to easily accessible destructive capabilities. Bostrom uses this hypothesis to ask whether some technologies could destabilize civilization by default.
AI alignment: Research aimed at making AI systems reliably pursue intended objectives and behave as intended. Bostrom’s control problem helped motivate this broader research program.

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