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Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom's file: anthropics, existential risk, Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, Superintelligence, and the philosopher who made machine doom a serious academic subject.
Bostrom spent two decades turning questions about anthropics, existential risk and future technology into an academic field, founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, made superintelligence a mainstream AI-risk concept, then turned from catastrophe toward the problem of meaning in a world where the machines work.
HOW THE HELL DID NICK BOSTROM GET HERE?
2002
ANTHROPIC BIAS PUTS THE OBSERVER INSIDE THE EQUATION
Bostrom published Anthropic Bias, an early book on observation selection effects that helped establish the philosophical style of his later work on humanity's long-term future.
RECEIPTS: Nick Bostromfirst-party
2005
OXFORD GETS A FUTURE OF HUMANITY INSTITUTE
Bostrom founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute in 2005 and led it as it grew from three researchers into a major center for work on existential risk and advanced technology.
RECEIPTS: Nick Bostromfirst-party
Sep 8, 2014
SUPERINTELLIGENCE MAKES THE CONTROL PROBLEM A BESTSELLER
Bostrom published Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, helping move the possibility of advanced AI catastrophe from a niche discussion into mainstream policy and technology debate.
RECEIPTS: Oxford University Pressreported
2019
THE TECHNOLOGY URN GETS A BLACK BALL
Bostrom published The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, asking whether technological development could eventually produce an invention that makes civilization catastrophically easy to destroy.
RECEIPTS: Nick Bostromfirst-party
2024
AFTER DOOM, HE ASKS WHAT HAPPENS IF EVERYTHING WORKS
Bostrom published Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World as the Future of Humanity Institute closed, shifting the question from surviving superintelligence to finding purpose after practical problems are solved.
RECEIPTS: Nick Bostromfirst-party