EXISTENTIAL RISKS - NICK BOSTROM

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher and the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, (a movement that advocates the use of science and technology to enhance man’s physical and mental capabilities). At the start of 2000 he made quite a splash with an article that maintained it was theoretically probable that we were actually living in a computer simulation created by a much more advanced civilisation. He coordinates research into existential risks at Oxford University, trying to classify the risks of extinction that face the human race.

According to Nick Bostrom, the invention of the atomic bomb marked the creation of a new category of risk, one that is global in scope and fatal in its outcome, but unlike the danger of a possible meteorite impact, these new risks have a much higher probability. He explains that we can no longer learn to protect ourselves against such risks by trial and error because there would be no second-chance. We must therefore take a proactive approach to foresee and prevent those risks that are subjectively estimated to be probable.

It is essential to remember that this research is not only conducted with the hope of preserving the human species, but also to preserve the potentiality of transhuman evolution, the radical enhancement of man by technology, which is a credo that a certain fringe of the contemporary intellectual elite adheres to.

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, the reversal test, and consequentialism. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (2000). In 2011, he founded the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology and he is currently the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. informatiques.
http://www.nickbostrom.com