Nick Bostrom

Director

nickbostrom.com

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher 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 heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director.  Bostrom is the most-cited professional philosopher under the age of 50.  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 the future of AI.  He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument (2003) and the concept of existential risk (2002).  His academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages.  He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been interviewed more than 1,000 times by various media.  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.  As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots.

For more background, see profiles in e.g. The New Yorker or Aeon.