Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom was born on March 10, 1973.⁠[1]

He grew up as Niklas Boström, an only child, in Helsingborg on the southern coast of Sweden.⁠[2]

In 1989 the teenager borrowed a library book of 19th-century German philosophy and then dedicated himself to intensive study, withdrawing from school to work through syllabuses at home; he later took a BA in philosophy, mathematics, mathematical logic and artificial intelligence at the University of Gothenburg.⁠[3]

He earned an MA in philosophy and in physics at the University of Stockholm from 1994 to 1996 and a PhD in philosophy at the London School of EconomicsLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a specialist social science university in central London, founded in 1895 by members of the Fabian Society. It is known for research in economics, politics and social policy, and its alumni and staff include many Nobel laureates and national leaders.Open the full entry from 1996 to 2000; Robert Nozick selected his dissertation for Routledge’s Outstanding Dissertations series. From 2000 to 2002 he was a lecturer in Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry’s Department of Philosophy.⁠[4]

In 1996, while pursuing further graduate work at the London School of Economics, he learned of the online discussion group administered by the Extropy Institute in California and became an active participant.⁠[2]

In early 1998 he and David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association to provide a general organizational basis for transhumanist groups and interests across the political spectrum and to develop a more mature and academically respectable form of transhumanism.⁠[5]

In 2002 he published “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards” (first version 2001) in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, No. 1, defining existential risks as threats that could cause human extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life.⁠[6]

The same year he published Anthropic Bias, a book on observation selection effects in science and philosophy; its full text was later made available online with Routledge’s permission.⁠[7]

At the beginning of 2003 he was appointed to a postdoctoral research fellowship in Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy, shortly before publishing “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”; the paper later inspired the play World of Wires, winner of the 2012 Obie Award for Best Direction, and the novels Bedlam and The Simulator, both published in 2013.⁠[8]

Published in Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 211 (2003), it argues that at least one of three propositions is true: the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of ancestor simulations; or we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.⁠[9]

In 2005 he established the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University to study big-picture questions about humanity’s long-term future.⁠[10]

On July 3, 2008, Global Catastrophic Risks, a collection he edited with Milan Cirkovic with a foreword by Martin Rees, was published; in it 26 experts examine the gravest risks of the 21st century, including natural catastrophes, nuclear war, biological weapons, general artificial intelligence and social collapse.⁠[11]

On August 26, 2010, the Oxford Martin School announced a new programme on the social impacts of future transformative technologies, with Bostrom as director and Bill Roscoe as co-director, initially focusing on the long-term future of computing, rapid technological change and existential risks.⁠[12]

In February 2013 he published “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority” in Global Policy, Vol. 4, Issue 1, clarifying the concept of existential risk, proposing an improved classification scheme and arguing for the maxipok rule as an action-guiding principle for reducing it.⁠[13]

In July 2014 Oxford University Press published his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies; on August 3 that year Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry recommended it on Twitter, writing: “We need to be super careful with AI.”⁠[14]

The book became a New York Times bestseller and sparked a global conversation about the future of AI.⁠[7]

In 2015 he gave the TED talk “What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?”, outlining the risks of superintelligent AI.⁠[15]

In December 2015 Foreign Policy named him to its 2015 Global Thinkers list in the Advocates category for bringing the threats posed by advanced artificial intelligence to the world stage; the Oxford Martin School said his participation in a UN panel that year indicated a historic shift in how governments consider security threats.⁠[16]

On April 15, 2019, in a conversation at TED2019 with Head of TED Chris Anderson, he argued that humanity could create a “black ball”, a technological breakthrough that could destroy us all, and explored how to prevent it.⁠[17]

On March 26, 2020, he appeared on episode 83 of the Lex Fridman Podcast, titled “Simulation and Superintelligence”; the episode summary describes his work on existential risks, the simulation hypothesis, human enhancement ethics and the risks of superintelligent AI systems.⁠[18]

In January 2023 he apologized for a 1996 email to the Extropians listserv in which he had written that black people were more stupid than white people, stating: “I completely repudiate this disgusting email.” The university suspended him while it investigated; in August 2023 a university representative told him, “We do not consider you to be a racist or that you hold racist views,” and judged his apology sincere, and he returned to official duties.⁠[19]

When the email surfaced, a University of Oxford spokesperson said the university “condemns in the strongest terms possible the views this particular academic expressed in his communications”, and the Oxford SU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality issued a statement reprimanding the remarks.⁠[20]

In 2024 Ideapress published his book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, which asks what gives life meaning in a “solved world” where superintelligence has been developed safely and human labor has become obsolete; it won a Gold Medal at the Living Now Book Awards 2024, among other awards.⁠[21]

The institute’s closing statement says it faced increasing administrative headwinds within Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy: the faculty froze its fundraising and hiring from 2020, decided in late 2023 not to renew the remaining staff contracts, and the institute closed on April 16, 2024.⁠[22]

Bostrom recalled that the institute started with three researchers in 2005 and grew to about fifty at its peak, attributing its closure to years of increasing bureaucratic strangulation from the faculty administration; he said the kind of work it was set up to enable now has a much broader support base, so it essentially served its purpose.⁠[23]

In July 2025 he released the first version of the working paper “Open Global Investment as a Governance Model for AGI”, proposing that AGI be developed within one or more corporations that encourage wide international shareholding and operate within a government-defined framework, and arguing that this is more inclusive and practical than proposals modelled on the Manhattan Project, CERN or Intelsat.⁠[24]

In 2026 he released the working paper “Optimal Timing for Superintelligence”, analysing the best timing for developing superintelligence from the standpoint of existing people; it concludes that for many parameter settings the optimal strategy is to move quickly to AGI capability and then pause briefly before full deployment, while warning that poorly implemented pauses could do more harm than good.⁠[25]

As of October 2026 he is Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative, having been Founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute from 2005 to 2024.⁠[26]

Personal website: Public link: https://nickbostrom.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

Future of Humanity Institute: Official website: https://www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]