Professor Nick Bostrom
About
Professor Bostrom has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic as well as philosophy. He is best known for his work in five areas: (i) existential risk; (ii) the simulation argument; (iii) anthropics (developing the first mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects); (iv) impacts of future technology; and (v) implications of consequentialism for global strategy.
In 2014 he was included on Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15 from all fields and the highest-ranked analytic philosopher. He is also the recipient of a Eugene R Gannon Award (one person selected annually worldwide from the fields of philosophy, mathematics, the arts and other humanities, and the natural sciences). He is the author of some 200 publications, and his writings have been translated into 22 languages.
Expertise
- Human enhancement (cognitive enhancement, life extension, genetic enhancement etc), including techniques, ethics, future prospects, and social and policy implications
- Global catastrophic risks (including from particle physics experiments, global warming, nuclear war, terrorism, pandemics, nanotechnology, etc)
- Future technologies (including nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cloning, virtual reality, genetic engineering, space colonisation, biotechnology, computing, uploading)
- Transhumanism, posthumanism, the future of human evolution
- The search for extraterrestrial life; multiverse cosmology; anthropic principle
Selected publications
Media experience
Professor Bostrom has extensive and wide-ranging national and international media experience, including more than 500 interviews for TV, film, radio, and print media.
Recent media work
- ‘AI is the last invention we would ever have to make’
- The Infinite Monkey Cage: Are We Living In A Simulation?
- MPs want pupils to learn to rival robots – they should be equipped for a work-free world instead
- Thinking machines
- Q&A: Philosopher Nick Bostrom on superintelligence, human enhancement and existential risk