Bostrom, Nick

Nick Bostrom

Bostrom, Nick

Bio

Nick Bostrom is the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He previously taught in the department of philosophy at Yale University and in the Yale Institute for Social and Policy Studies. He has more than 140 publications to his name, including three scholarly books: Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (ed., OUP, 2008), and Enhancing Humans (ed., OUP, 2008). His writings have been translated into 17 different languages, and reprinted numerous times in anthologies and textbooks. Bostrom has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic, as well as analytic philosophy. He is a leading thinker on big-picture questions for humanity. His research also covers the foundations of probability theory, scientific methodology, human enhancement, global catastrophic risks, moral philosophy, and consequences of future technology. He developed the first mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects, and he is also the originator of the Simulation Argument, the Reversal Test, and the concept of Existential Risk. He serves occasionally as an expert consultant for various governmental agencies in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.