Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World

by Nick Bostrom

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646871643
Publisher:	Ideapress Publishing
Publication date:	03/27/2024
Pages:	536
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

“Fascinating” —The New York Times

“Yeah.” —Elon Musk

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

“Brilliant! Hilarious, poignant, insightful, clever, important.” —Prof. Thaddeus Metz

“When technology has solved humanity’s deepest problems, what is left to do? … 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

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

“Bostrom is a marvelously energetic prose stylist … 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

“One of the strangest … books I’ve ever read.” —Popular Science Books

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

“Wow.” —Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University; Co—author of ‘The Second Machine Age’

From the Publisher