Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom

Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom

Gold Medal Winner, Living Now Book Awards 2024 Best Books of 2024, Kirkus Reviews Winner, Independent Press Awards 2024 Honorable Mention, Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2024 (Religion/Spirituality) Winner, PenCraft Book Awards 2024 (Fiction: Intrigue) Best AI Books of 2024, The Information Winner, American Book Fest (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre) Winner, 2025 American Legacy Book Award (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre) Bostrom’s last book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), sparked a global conversation on AI that continues and widens to this day. That book, which despite its academic style became a New York Times bestseller, focused on what would happen if AI goes wrong. But what if AI goes right? Suppose we succeed in developing superintelligence safely and that we make good use of the almost magical powers this unlocks. We would then achieve full unemployment. More than that, we would transition into a “post-instrumental condition," in which human effort is not needed for any practical purpose. This would be a condition of material abundance. Human nature itself would become fully malleable. In such a solved world, what would be the point of human existence? What could give meaning to our lives? Which old values will we have to sacrifice, and which new values will we be able to realize to wonderful degrees? Deep Utopia—a work that is again years ahead of its time—takes the readers on a journey into some of the most profound questions that arise as we dissolve the limits of our current mode of being. It is a lush, playful, difficult, and human text that interleaves fiction stories and philosophical lectures that show us a glimpse of a different kind of existence–one that might be ours in the not-so-distant future.

"This is a wondrous bookIt is mind-expanding. It is poetic. It is moving. It is funny. The writing is superb. Every page is full of ideas.” — Russ Roberts, EconTalk host, President of Shalem College 

"Wow!" — Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University; Co-author of The Second Machine Age

"When technology has solved humanity’s deepest problems, what is left to do? That is one question considered in a new publication by Nick Bostrom. … He argues that beyond the post-scarcity world lies a “post-instrumental” one … With the arrival of AI Utopia, this would be put to the test. Quite a lot would ride on the result." — The Economist

"Yeah" — Elon Musk

"A fascinating book" — Peter Coy, The New York Times

“Rather than play the doomy hits, Deep Utopia considers a future in which humanity has successfully developed superintelligent machines but averted disaster. … [it] examines what meaning there would be in life inside a techno-utopia, and asks if it might be rather hollow.” — WIRED

"Bostrom is a marvelously energetic prose stylist; it’s uncanny how often he turns subjects like utilitarianism and Malthusian superabundance into genuinely thrilling reading. ... employs a wry understated humor that’s often very quiet in its punchlines. ... A complex and stimulatingly provocative look at just how possible a fulfilling life might be.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Reminiscent of Plato’s dialogues—with a 21st-century twist.”— Stuff (NZ)

"This is one of the strangest sort-of popular science (or philosophy, or something or other) books I've ever read. … I can't say I enjoyed reading this book - but I think I am glad that I did." — Popular Science Books

"A major contribution to human thought and ways of thinking." — Robert Lawrence Kuhn

"A really fun, and important, book... the writing is brilliant... incredibly rich... a constant parade of fascinating ideas." — Professor Guy Kahane, University of Oxford

"Brilliant! Hilarious, poignant, insightful, clever, important." — Professor Thaddeus Metz, University of Pretoria, author of Meaning in Life

NICK BOSTROM is a Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute.  Bostrom is the world’s most cited philosopher aged 50 or under.  He is the author of more than 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), a New York Times bestseller which sparked a global conversation about the future of AI.  His work has pioneered many of the ideas that frame current thinking about humanity’s future (such as the concept of an existential risk, the simulation argument, the vulnerable world hypothesis, the unilateralist’s curse, etc.), while some of his recent work concerns the moral status of digital minds.  His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages; he is a repeat main-stage TED speaker; and he has been interviewed more than 1,000 times by media outlets around the world.  He has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15.  He has an academic background in theoretical physics, AI, and computational neuroscience as well as philosophy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781646871643
ISBN 10	1646871642
Title	Deep Utopia
Author	Nick Bostrom
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Ideapress Publishing
Year published	2024-05-21
Number of pages	536
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable