Future of Humanity Institute

Nick Bostrom established the institute in November 2005 as part of the Oxford Martin School, then the James Martin 21st Century School. Between 2008 and 2010, FHI hosted the Global Catastrophic Risks conference, wrote 22 academic journal articles, and published 34 chapters in academic volumes. FHI researchers have given policy advice at the World Economic Forum, to the private and non-profit sector (such as the Macarthur Foundation, and the World Health Organization), as well as to governmental bodies in Sweden, Singapore, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Bostrom and bioethicist Julian Savulescu also published the book Human Enhancement in March 2009.{{cite report |author=Nick Bostrom |date=18 July 2007 |archive-date=21 December 2012 |title=Achievements Report: 2008-2010 |url=http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/19900/Achievements_Report_2008-2010.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121221144029/http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/19900/Achievements_Report_2008-2010.pdf |publisher=Future of Humanity Institute |access-date=31 March 2014 }} Most recently, FHI has focused on the dangers of advanced artificial intelligence (AI). In 2014, its researchers published several books on AI risk, including Stuart Armstrong's Smarter Than Us and Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.{{cite news |author=Mark Piesing |date=17 May 2012 |title=AI uprising: humans will be outsourced, not obliterated |url=https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/17/the-dangers-of-an-ai-smarter-than-us |newspaper=Wired |access-date=31 March 2014 }}{{cite news |last=Coughlan |first=Sean |date=24 April 2013 |title=How are humans going to become extinct? |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22002530 |newspaper=BBC News |access-date=29 March 2014 }}

In 2018, Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of up to approximately £13.4 million to FHI over three years, with a large portion conditional on successful hiring.{{cite web|url=https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/future-humanity-institute-work-on-global-catastrophic-risks|title=Future of Humanity Institute — Work on Global Catastrophic Risks|author=Open Philanthropy Project|author-link=Open Philanthropy Project|date=July 2018}}

{{main article|Existential risk}}

The largest topic FHI has spent time exploring is global catastrophic risk, and in particular existential risk. In a 2002 paper, Bostrom defined an "existential risk" as one "where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential".{{cite journal |author=Nick Bostrom |date=March 2002 |title=Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards |url=http://www.jetpress.org/volume9/risks.html |journal=Journal of Evolution and Technology |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=308–314 |access-date=31 March 2014}} This includes scenarios where humanity is not directly harmed, but it fails to colonize space and make use of the observable universe's available resources in humanly valuable projects, as discussed in Bostrom's 2003 paper, "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development".{{cite journal |author=Nick Bostrom |date=November 2003 |title=Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development |url=http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html |journal=Utilitas |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=308–314 |doi= 10.1017/s0953820800004076|access-date=31 March 2014|citeseerx=10.1.1.429.2849 |s2cid=15860897 }}

Bostrom and Milan Ćirković's 2008 book Global Catastrophic Risks collects essays on a variety of such risks, both natural and anthropogenic. Possible catastrophic risks from nature include super-volcanism, impact events, and energetic astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts, cosmic rays, solar flares, and supernovae. These dangers are characterized as relatively small and relatively well understood, though pandemics may be exceptions as a result of being more common, and of dovetailing with technological trends.{{cite news |author=Ross Andersen |date=6 March 2012 |title=We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/ |newspaper=The Atlantic |access-date=29 March 2014 }}

Synthetic pandemics via weaponized biological agents are given more attention by FHI. Technological outcomes the institute is particularly interested in include anthropogenic climate change, nuclear warfare and nuclear terrorism, molecular nanotechnology, and artificial general intelligence. In expecting the largest risks to stem from future technologies, and from advanced artificial intelligence in particular, FHI agrees with other existential risk reduction organizations, such as the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.{{cite news |author=Kate Whitehead |date=16 March 2014 |title=Cambridge University study centre focuses on risks that could annihilate mankind |url=http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/article/1449541/cambridge-university-study-centre-focuses-risks-could |newspaper=South China Morning Post |access-date=29 March 2014 }}{{cite news |author=Jenny Hollander |date=September 2012 |title=Oxford Future of Humanity Institute knows what will make us extinct |url=http://www.bustle.com/articles/4682-oxford-future-of-humanity-institute-knows-what-will-make-us-extinct |newspaper=Bustle |access-date=31 March 2014 }} FHI researchers have also studied the impact of technological progress on social and institutional risks, such as totalitarianism, automation-driven unemployment, and information hazards.{{cite web |url=http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf |title=Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge |author=Nick Bostrom |website=Future of Humanity Institute |access-date=31 March 2014}}

In 2020, FHI Senior Research Fellow Toby Ord published his book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, in which he argues that safeguarding humanity's future is among the most important moral issues of our time.{{Cite web|last=Ord|first=Toby|title=The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity|url=https://theprecipice.com/|access-date=2020-10-18|website=The Precipice Website|language=en-US}}{{Cite web|last=Chivers|first=Tom|title=How close is humanity to destroying itself?|url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-close-is-humanity-to-destroying-itself|access-date=2020-10-18|website=The Spectator|date=7 March 2020 }}

{{main article|Anthropic principle}}

FHI devotes much of its attention to exotic threats that have been little explored by other organizations, and to methodological considerations that inform existential risk reduction and forecasting. The institute has particularly emphasized anthropic reasoning in its research, as an under-explored area with general epistemological implications.

Anthropic arguments FHI has studied include the doomsday argument, which claims that humanity is likely to go extinct soon because it is unlikely that one is observing a point in human history that is extremely early. Instead, present-day humans are likely to be near the middle of the distribution of humans that will ever live. Bostrom has also popularized the simulation argument.

A recurring theme in FHI's research is the Fermi paradox, the surprising absence of observable alien civilizations. Robin Hanson has argued that there must be a "Great Filter" preventing space colonization to account for the paradox. That filter may lie in the past, if intelligence is much more rare than current biology would predict; or it may lie in the future, if existential risks are even larger than is currently recognized.

Closely linked to FHI's work on risk assessment, astronomical waste, and the dangers of future technologies is its work on the promise and risks of human enhancement. The modifications in question may be biological, digital, or sociological, and an emphasis is placed on the most radical hypothesized changes, rather than on the likeliest short-term innovations. FHI's bioethics research focuses on the potential consequences of gene therapy, life extension, brain implants and brain–computer interfaces, and mind uploading.{{cite web |url=http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf |title=Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap |author=Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom |website=Future of Humanity Institute |access-date=31 March 2014}}

FHI's focus has been on methods for assessing and enhancing human intelligence and rationality, as a way of shaping the speed and direction of technological and social progress. FHI's work on human irrationality, as exemplified in cognitive heuristics and biases, includes an ongoing collaboration with Amlin to study the systemic risk arising from biases in modeling.{{cite press release |author= |title=Amlin and Oxford University launch major research project into the Systemic Risk of Modelling |url=http://www.amlin.com/media/press-releases/2014/11-2-2014.aspx |publisher=Amlin |date=11 February 2014 |access-date=2014-03-31 |archive-date=2014-04-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140413083047/http://www.amlin.com/media/press-releases/2014/11-2-2014.aspx |url-status=dead }}{{cite news |author= |title=Amlin and Oxford University to collaborate on modelling risk study |url=http://www.cirmagazine.com/cir/Amlin-and-Oxford-University-to-collaborate-on-modelling-risk-study.php |work=Continuity, Insurance & Risk Magazine |date=11 February 2014 |access-date=31 March 2014 }}

• Toby Ord: The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, 2020. {{ISBN|1526600218|}}
• Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, 2014. {{ISBN|0-415-93858-9}}
• Nick Bostrom and Milan Ćirković: Global Catastrophic Risks, 2011. {{ISBN|978-0-19-857050-9}}
• Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu: Human Enhancement, 2011. {{ISBN|0-19-929972-2}}
• [https://www.amazon.com/Anthropic-Bias-Observation-Selection-Philosophy/dp/0415883946/ Nick Bostrom: Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy], 2010. {{ISBN|0-415-93858-9}}
• [https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg: Brain Emulation Roadmap], 2008.

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}

• Future of Life Institute
• Futures studies
• Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
• Effective altruism

{{div col end}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite web |last1=Anthony |first1=Andrew |title=‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute |url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/28/nick-bostrom-controversial-future-of-humanity-institute-closure-longtermism-affective-altruism |website=The Observer |date=28 April 2024}}

• {{Official website|http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/|FHI official website}}

{{Future of Humanity Institute|state=expanded}}

{{Effective altruism|state=expanded}}

{{Global catastrophic risks}}

{{Existential risk from artificial intelligence}}

{{LessWrong}}

{{Molecular nanotechnology footer}}

{{Transhumanism footer}}

Category:Departments of the University of Oxford

Category:Futures studies organizations

Category:Research institutes in Oxford

Category:Research institutes established in 2005

Category:2005 establishments in England

Category:Transhumanist organizations

Category:Existential risk organizations

Category:Organizations associated with effective altruism

Category:Nick Bostrom