Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
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Full Name and Common Aliases
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Full name: Nick Bostrom
Common aliases: None
Birth and Death Dates
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Born: March 7, 1973 (age 50)
Died: N/A (still alive)
Nationality and Profession(s)
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Nationality: Swedish
Profession: Philosopher, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), Professor at the University of Oxford
Early Life and Background
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Nick Bostrom was born on March 7, 1973, in Stockholm, Sweden. He grew up in a family that valued education and intellectual pursuits. Bostrom's interest in philosophy began early, and he pursued it throughout his academic career.
Bostrom earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Gothenburg before moving to the United Kingdom for further studies. He received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Philosophy from St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1999. His research focused on the philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and the ethics of advanced technologies.
Major Accomplishments
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Bostrom has made significant contributions to various fields, including:
Director of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI): Bostrom founded the FHI in 2005, which focuses on understanding the long-term future of humanity and mitigating potential existential risks.
Professor at the University of Oxford: He is currently a Professorial Fellow at St Cross College and a Director of the Centre for Effective Altruism.
Fellowships and Honors: Bostrom has been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (2011) and a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2004).Notable Works or Actions
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Some of Bostrom's notable works include:
"Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy" (2002): This book explores how selection effects influence scientific inquiry, leading to potential biases.
"Global Catastrophic Risks" (2016): Co-edited with Milan Ćirković, this collection examines the risks of global catastrophes, including anthropogenic and natural disasters.
"Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" (2014): This book explores the potential consequences of developing superintelligent machines, advocating for careful consideration to mitigate risks.
Impact and Legacy
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Nick Bostrom's work has had a significant impact on various fields:
Existential Risk Research: His contributions have helped establish existential risk research as a distinct area of study, encouraging more people to consider the long-term implications of human actions.
Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Bostrom's work on superintelligence and its risks has sparked important discussions about AI ethics and governance.
Effective Altruism: As a leading figure in effective altruism, Bostrom promotes the idea that individuals should prioritize causes with significant potential for positive impact.Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
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Nick Bostrom is widely quoted and remembered due to his:
Innovative Research: His work on anthropic bias, superintelligence, and global catastrophic risks has pushed the boundaries of philosophical inquiry.
Practical Applications: Bostrom's research often emphasizes practical implications, encouraging readers to consider real-world consequences.
Clear Communication: He effectively communicates complex ideas to a broad audience, making his work accessible and influential.
Bostrom's groundbreaking research, leadership in existential risk research, and commitment to effective altruism have solidified his position as one of the most influential thinkers of our time.
Quotes by Nick Bostrom
The clear feasibility of biological enhancement should increase our confidence that machine intelligence is ultimately achievable, since enhanced human scientists and engineers will be able to make more and faster progress than their au naturel counterparts.
An emulation operating at a speed of ten thousand times that of a biological brain would be able to read a book in a few seconds and write a PhD thesis in an afternoon.
Presumably, these agents are still too primitive to have any moral status. But how confident can we really be that this is so? More importantly, how confident can we be that we will know to stop in time, before our programs become capable of experiencing morally relevant suffering?
We do not need to plug a fiber optic cable into our brains in order to access the Internet. Not only can the human retina transmit data at an impressive rate of nearly 10 million bits per second, but it comes pre-packaged with a massive amount of dedicated wetware, the visual cortex, that is highly adapted to extracting meaning from this information torrent and to interfacing with other brain areas for further processing.
Moral goodness might be more like a precious metal than an abundant element in human nature, and even after the ore has been processed and refined in accordance with the prescriptions of the CEV proposal, who knows whether the principal outcome will be shining virtue, indifferent slag, or toxic sludge?
The existence of birds demonstrated that heavier-than-air flight was physically possible and prompted efforts to build flying machines. Yet the first functioning airplanes did not flap their wings. The jury is out on whether machine intelligence will be like flight, which humans achieved through an artificial mechanism, or like combustion, which we initially mastered by copying naturally occurring fires.
We should resist the temptation to roll every normatively desirable attribute into one giant amorphous concept of mental functioning, as though one could never find one admirable trait without all the others being equally present. Instead, we should recognize that there can exist instrumentally powerful information processing systems – intelligent systems – that are neither inherently good nor reliably wise.
Newer systems use statistical machine learning techniques that automatically build statistical models from observed usage patterns.
Granted, there is still that picture of the Terminator jeering over practically every journalistic attempt to engage with the subject.
One can speculate that the tardiness and wobbliness of humanity’s progress on many of the “eternal problems” of philosophy are due to the unsuitability of the human cortex for philosophical work. On this view, our most celebrated philosophers are like dogs walking on their hind legs – just barely attaining the treshold level of performance required for engaging in the activity at all.