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Nick Bostrom

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies Hardcover – Illustrated, 3 July 2014

by Nick Bostrom (Author)

4.4 4,041 ratings

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The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain. Yet the writing is so lucid that it somehow makes it all seem easy. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom's work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

ISBN-10

0199678111
ISBN-13

978-0199678112
Edition

Illustrated
Publisher

OUP Oxford
Publication date

3 July 2014
Language

English
Dimensions

23.62 x 2.54 x 15.75 cm
Print length

352 pages
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Review

Worth reading. ― Elon Musk, Founder of SpaceX and Tesla

I highly recommend this book ― Bill Gates

very deep ... every paragraph has like six ideas embedded within it. ― Nate Silver

Nick Bostrom makes a persuasive case that the future impact of AI is perhaps the most important issue the human race has ever faced. Instead of passively drifting, we need to steer a course. Superintelligence charts the submerged rocks of the future with unprecedented detail. It marks the beginning of a new era ― Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkley

Those disposed to dismiss an 'AI takeover' as science fiction may think again after reading this original and well-argued book ― Martin Rees, Past President, Royal Society

This superb analysis by one of the worlds clearest thinkers tackles one of humanitys greatest challenges: if future superhuman artificial intelligence becomes the biggest event in human history, then how can we ensure that it doesnt become the last? ― Max Tegmark, Professor of Physics, MIT

Terribly important ... groundbreaking... extraordinary sagacity and clarity, enabling him to combine his wide-ranging knowledge over an impressively broad spectrum of disciplines - engineering, natural sciences, medicine, social sciences and philosophy - into a comprehensible whole... If this book gets the reception that it deserves, it may turn out the most important alarm bell since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring from 1962, or ever ― Olle Haggstrom, Professor of Mathematical Statistics

Valuable. The implications of introducing a second intelligent species onto Earth are far-reaching enough to deserve hard thinking ― The Economist

There is no doubting the force of [Bostroms] arguments the problem is a research challenge worthy of the next generations best mathematical talent. Human civilisation is at stake ― Financial Times

His book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies became an improbable bestseller in 2014 ― Alex Massie, Times (Scotland)

Ein Text so nüchtern und cool, so angstfrei und dadurch umso erregender, dass danach das, was bisher vor allem Filme durchgespielt haben, auf einmal höchst plausibel erscheint. A text so sober and cool, so fearless and thus all the more exciting that what has until now mostly been acted through in films, all of a sudden appears most plausible afterwards. (translated from German) ― Georg Diez, DER SPIEGEL

Worth reading.... We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes ― Elon Musk, Founder of SpaceX and Tesla

A damn hard read ― Sunday Telegraph

I recommend Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom as an excellent book on this topic ― Jolyon Brown, Linux Format

Every intelligent person should read it. ― Nils Nilsson, Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, Stanford University

An intriguing mix of analytic philosophy, computer science and cutting-edge science fiction, Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence is required reading for anyone seeking to make sense of the recent surge of interest in artificial intelligence (AI). ― Colin Garvey, Icon

About the Author

Nick Bostrom is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (ed., OUP, 2008), and Human Enhancement (ed., OUP, 2009). He previously taught at Yale, and he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the British Academy. Bostrom has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic as well as philosophy.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ OUP Oxford; Illustrated edition (3 July 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199678111
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199678112
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 23.62 x 2.54 x 15.75 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 88,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 142 in Higher Mathematical Education
- 197 in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
- 328 in Popular Maths

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4.4 4,041 ratings

About the author

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Nick Bostrom

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Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher and polymath with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he leads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. (The FHI is a multidisciplinary university research center; it is also home to the Center for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence and to teams working on AI safety, biosecurity, macrostrategy, and various other technology or foundational questions.) He is the author of some 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 helped spark a global conversation about artificial intelligence. Bostrom’s widely influential work, which traverses philosophy, science, ethics, and technology, has illuminated the links between our present actions and long-term global outcomes, thereby casting a new light on the human condition.

He is recipient of a Eugene R. Gannon Award, and has been listed on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice. He was included on Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. His writings have been translated into 28 languages, and there have been more than 100 translations and reprints of his works. He is a repeat TED speaker and has done more than 2,000 interviews with television, radio, and print media. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the doom and gloom of his Swedish roots.

For more, see www.nickbostrom.com

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Egg Chen

Informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2022

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I didn't purchase this book for myself, but as a gift. The receiver said it was very informative and just what he wanted.

2 people found this helpful

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Calum

A seriously important book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 July 2014

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Nick Bostrom is one of the cleverest people in the world. He is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, and was recently voted 15th most influential thinker in the world by the readers of Prospect magazine. He has laboured mightily and brought forth a very important book, Superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies.

I hope this book finds a huge audience. It deserves to. The subject is vitally important for our species, and no-one has thought more deeply or more clearly than Bostrom about whether superintelligence is coming, what it will be like, and whether we can arrange for a good outcome – and indeed what ” a good outcome” actually means.

It’s not an easy read. Bostrom has a nice line in wry self-deprecating humour, so I’ll let him explain:

“This has not been an easy book to write. I have tried to make it an easy book to read, but I don’t think I have quite succeeded. … the target audience [is] an earlier time-slice of myself, and I tried to produce a book that I would have enjoyed reading. This could prove a narrow demographic.”

This passage demonstrates that Bostrom can write very well indeed. Unfortunately the search for precision often lures him into an overly academic style. For example, he might have done better to avoid using words like modulo, percept and irenic without explanation – or at all.

Superintelligence covers a lot of territory, and there is only space here to indicate a few of the high points. Bostrom has compiled a meta-survey of 160 leading AI researchers: 50% of them think that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) – an AI which is at least our equal across all our cognitive functions – will be created by 2050. 90% of the researchers think it will arrive by 2100. Bostrom thinks these dates may prove too soon, but not by a huge margin.

He also thinks that an AGI will become a superintelligence very soon after its creation, and will quickly dominate other life forms (including us), and go on to exploit the full resources of the universe (“our cosmic endowment”) to achieve its goals. What obsesses Bostrom is what those goals will be, and whether we can determine them. If the goals are human-unfriendly, we are toast.

He does not think that intelligence augmentation or brain-computer interfaces can save us by enabling us to reach superintelligence ourselves. Superintelligence is a two-horse race between whole brain emulation (copying a human brain into a computer) and what he calls Good Old Fashioned AI (machine learning, neural networks and so on).

The book’s middle chapter and fulcrum is titled “Is the default outcome doom?” Uncharacteristically, Bostrom is coy about answering his own question, but the implication is yes, unless we can control the AGI (constrain its capabilities), or determine its motivation set. The second half of the book addresses these challenges in great depth. His conclusion on the control issue is that we probably cannot constrain an AGI for long, and anyway there wouldn’t be much point having one if you never opened up the throttle. His conclusion on the motivation issue is that we may be able to determine the goals of an AGI, but that it requires a lot more work, despite the years of intensive labour that he and his colleagues have already put in. There are huge difficulties in specifying what goals we would like the AGI to have, and if we manage that bit then there are massive further difficulties ensuring that the instructions we write remain effective. Forever.

Now perhaps I am being dense, but I cannot understand why anyone would think that a superintelligence would abide forever by rules that we installed at its creation. A successful superintelligence will live for aeons, operating at thousands or millions of times the speed that we do. It will discover facts about the laws of physics, and the parameters of intelligence and consciousness that we cannot even guess at. Surely our instructions will quickly become redundant. But Bostrom is a good deal smarter than me, and I hope that he is right and I am wrong.

In any case, Bostrom’s main argument – that we should take the prospect of superintelligence very seriously – is surely right. Towards the end of book he issues a powerful rallying cry:

“Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. … [The] sensible thing to do would be to put it down gently, back out of the room, and contact the nearest adult. [But] the chances that we will all find the sense to put down the dangerous stuff seems almost negligible. … Nor is there a grown-up in sight. [So] in the teeth of this most unnatural and inhuman problem [we] need to bring all our human resourcefulness to bear on its solution.”

Amen to that.

75 people found this helpful

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moglodyte

the great majority of the book is accessible to lay readers ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2017

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Superintelligence, Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom, 2016 edition. A rigorous philosophical and ethical treatment of the subject. It demands quite an effort from the reader but the more you are willing to make the more the reward. The formalist style and maths gives it a textbook feel. Some of it was over my head but don't be put off, the great majority of the book is accessible to lay readers although some background in the subject would obviously help. A strong theme is the need for some overreaching systems of control to protect us from undesirable behavior by super-intelligent machines lest they misunderstand, whether accidentally or deliberately, the goals we set them. If that sounds too much like science fiction then reading the book might change your mind. Among the many topics addressed I found the whole brain emulation idea quite fascinating, also the notion of "mind crime" where inside a super-intelligent machine there is some kind of sentient being which could be exposed to mental suffering. That gives one pause for thought.

I was expecting more about the architectures and software methods that are currently showing the most promise but these are only mentioned indirectly, they are not the subject of this book. While I am in awe of the huge intellectual depth and span of this work, I reluctantly drop half a star (rounded to one) because of the almost obsessional academic style which starts to feel tedious and repetitive at times. I felt that he could get some of his arguments across more economically to greater effect. But the book is nevertheless a masterpiece on this subject and will likely be a reference for many years to come.

4 people found this helpful

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Lu

Very interesting, but a challenging read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 May 2023

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Love the book, but make sure you are able to fully dedicate to reading it if you are new to this level of book because there is a lot of technical detail included

One person found this helpful

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C. Bridge

Small font

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 June 2023

Verified Purchase

I cannot comment on the contents, but what I can say upon opening the paperback is the font is too small for a person of my age, maybe okay for an artificial vision system to read.

One person found this helpful

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RReeve

Extreamly interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 September 2022

Verified Purchase

I bought this book after listening to Nick Bostrom on the Joe Rogan podcast. This book cuts through all of the artifical intelligence nonsense that people talk about and it gave me a much better understanding of the technology.

I used to fear ai but now I know how far away we are from any real world dangers. Ai is still very early and there are some enormous obstacles to get past before we see real intelligence that beats the Turin test/imitation game every single time. Infact, some experts say that the Turin test is too easy and we need to come up with a better method to measure the abilities and limitations of an ai subject. I agree with that.

Extreamly interesting read. Great book.

2 people found this helpful

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