"Overpopulation or underpopulation?" by Toby Ord

18 October 2011

Portrait of Dr Toby Ord

with Dr Toby Ord
Senior Researcher

Dr Toby Ord is a Senior Researcher at the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative and serves on the board of the Centre for the Governance of AI. His work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity. What are the most important issues of our ...

Seminar by Dr Toby Ord, part of the "Is the Planet Full" Series

It is common to hear about the problems of overpopulation, but do we really have too many people? Do we have an acceptable number? Or might we even have too few? Toby Ord shows how we ignore the good side of having a large population, how we can weigh the benefits and drawbacks of having a large population, and how future technologies could create a moral imperative to massively increase our population in the 21st century and beyond.