"Facing the unknown: the future of humanity" with Prof Nick Bostrom

Past Event

Date
29 October 2015, 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Location
Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

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This event is now full, though will be live streamed on our YouTube channel

Professor Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, will explore the huge technological, scientific and environmental shifts that have led to humanity’s current state, and consider the choices that will determine our long-term future.

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About the speaker

Professor Nick Bostrom is Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (ed., OUP, 2008), Human Enhancement (ed., OUP, 2009), and Superintelligence (OUP, 2014). He previously taught at Yale, and he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the British Academy. Bostrom has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic as well as philosophy.

He is best known for his work in five areas: (i) the concept of existential risk; (ii) the simulation argument; (iii) anthropics (developing the first mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects); (iv) transhumanism, including related issues in bioethics and on consequences of future technologies; and (v) foundations and practical implications of consequentialism.

In 2009, he was awarded the Eugene R. Gannon Award (one person selected annually worldwide from the fields of philosophy, mathematics, the arts and other humanities, and the natural sciences). He has been listed in the FP 100 Global Thinkers list, the Foreign Policy Magazine's list of the world's top 100 minds. His writings have been translated into more than 21 languages, and there have been some 80 translations or reprints of his works. He has done more than 500 interviews for TV, film, radio, and print media, and he has addressed academic and popular audiences around the world.