Deep Utopia
Life and Meaning in a Solved World
Nick Bostrom (Ideapress, 2024)
Gold Medal Winner,
Living Now Book Awards 2024
Nonfiction: Cross-Genre WINNER,
American Book Fest
Fiction: Intrigue WINNER,
PenCraft Book Awards
Update 15 October 2024: Audiobook now available!
Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014) sparked a global conversation on AI that continues to this day. That book, which became a surprise New York Times bestseller, focused on what might happen if AI development goes wrong.
But what if things go right? Suppose we develop superintelligence safely and ethically, and that we make good use of the almost magical powers this technology would unlock. We would transition into an era in which human labor becomes obsolete—a “post-instrumental” condition in which human efforts are not needed for any practical purpose. Furthermore, human nature itself becomes fully malleable.
The challenge we confront here is not technological but philosophical and spiritual. In such a “solved world”, what is the point of human existence? What gives meaning to life? What would we do and experience?
Deep Utopia—a work that is again decades ahead of its time—takes the reader who is able to follow on a journey into the heart of some of the profoundest questions before us, questions we didn’t even know to ask. It shows us a glimpse of a different kind of existence, which might be ours in the future.
“This is a wondrous book. It is mind-expanding. It is poetic. It is moving. It is funny. The writing is superb. Every page is full of ideas.”
—Russ Roberts, President of Shalem College
“Fascinating”
—The New York Times
“Yeah.”
—Elon Musk
“A major contribution to human thought and ways of thinking.”
—Robert Lawrence Kuhn
“Brilliant! Hilarious, poignant, insightful, clever, important.”
—Prof. Thaddeus Metz
“When technology has solved humanity’s deepest problems, what is left to do? … argues that beyond the post-scarcity world lies a ‘post-instrumental’ one … With the arrival of AI Utopia, this would be put to the test. Quite a lot would ride on the result.”
—The Economist
“Reminiscent of Plato’s dialogues—with a 21st-century twist.”
—Stuff (NZ)
“Bostrom is a marvelously energetic prose stylist … Wry understated humor that’s often very quiet in its punchlines. … A complex and stimulatingly provocative look at just how possible a fulfilling life might be.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“One of the strangest … books I’ve ever read.”
—Popular Science Books
“A really fun, and important, book… the writing is brilliant… incredibly rich… a constant parade of fascinating ideas.”
—Prof. Guy Kahane, Oxford University
“Wow.”
—Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University; Co-author of ‘The Second Machine Age’
About the author
Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, along with philosophy. He is one of the most-cited philosophers in the world, and has been referred to as “the Swedish superbrain”.
He’s been a Professor at Oxford University, where he served as the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute from 2005 until its closure in April 2024. He is currently the founder and Director of Research of the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.
Bostrom is the author of 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. His work has pioneered many of the ideas that frame current thinking about humanity’s future (such as the concept of an existential risk, the simulation argument, the vulnerable world hypothesis, the unilateralist’s curse, etc.), while some of his recent work concerns the moral status of digital minds. His most recent book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, was published on 27 March 2024.
His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages; he is a repeat main-stage TED speaker; 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.
For more background, see profiles in e.g. The New Yorker or Aeon.
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