A History of Transhumanist Thought

The human desire to acquire new capacities is as ancient as our species itself. We have always sought to expand the boundaries of our existence, be it socially, geographically, or mentally. There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to search for a way around every obstacle and limitation to human life and happiness.

Nick Bostrom is Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He also directs the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Center. 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: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), a New York Times bestseller. Bostrom holds bachelor degrees in artificial intelligence, philosophy, mathematics and logic followed by master’s degrees in philosophy, physics and computational neuroscience. In 2000, he was awarded a PhD in Philosophy from the London School of Economics. He is recipient of a 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 on Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice; and he was included on Prospect magazine's World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15 from all fields and the highest-ranked analytic philosopher. His writings have been translated into 24 languages. There have been more than 100 translations and reprints of his works. During his time in London, Bostrom also did some turns on London’s stand-up comedy circuit. Nick is best known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, the simulation argument, artificial intelligence risks, the reversal test, and practical implications of consequentialism. The bestseller _Superintelligence_, and FHI’s work on AI, has changed the global conversation on the future of machine intelligence, helping to stimulate the emergence of a new field of technical research on scalable AI control.