The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) is an

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

research centre at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

investigating big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects. It was founded in 2005 as part of the

Faculty of Philosophy A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

and the

Oxford Martin School The Oxford Martin School is a research and policy unit based in the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford. It was founded in June 2005 as the James Martin 21st Century School and is located in the original building of the Indian ...

. Its director is philosopher

Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom ( ; sv, Niklas Boström ; born 10 March 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and th ...

, and its research staff and associates include futurist

Anders Sandberg Anders Sandberg (born 11 July 1972) is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at th ...

, engineer K. Eric Drexler, economist

Robin Hanson Robin Dale Hanson (born August 28, 1959) is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known for his work on idea futures and markets, a ...

, and

Giving What We Can Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an effective altruism-associated organisation whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities. It was founded at Oxford University in 2009 by the philosopher Toby Ord, physician-in- ...

founder

Toby Ord Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979) is an Australian philosopher. He founded Giving What We Can in 2009, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the ...

. Sharing an office and working closely with the

Centre for Effective Altruism The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is an Oxford-based charity that builds and supports the effective altruism community. It was founded in 2012 by William MacAskill and Toby Ord, both philosophers at the University of Oxford. CEA is part o ...

, the institute's stated objective is to focus research where it can make the greatest positive difference for humanity in the long term. It engages in a mix of academic and outreach activities, seeking to promote informed discussion and public engagement in government, businesses, universities, and other organizations. The centre's largest research funders include

Amlin MS Amlin Ltd is an insurer operating in the Lloyd's, UK, Continental Europe and Bermudian markets. Specialising in providing insurance cover to commercial enterprises and reinsurance protection to other insurance companies around the world, MS ...

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

, the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientif ...

Future of Life Institute The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization that works to reduce global catastrophic and existential risks facing humanity, particularly existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The Institute's work is ma ...

, and

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the n ...

History

Nick Bostrom established the institute in November 2005 as part of the Oxford Martin School, then the James Martin 21st Century School. Between 2008 and 2010, FHI hosted the Global Catastrophic Risks conference, wrote 22 academic journal articles, and published 34 chapters in academic volumes. FHI researchers have been mentioned over 5,000 times in the media and have given policy advice at the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

, to the private and non-profit sector (such as the

Macarthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and ...

, and the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...

), as well as to governmental bodies in Sweden, Singapore, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Bostrom and bioethicist

Julian Savulescu Julian Savulescu (born 22 December 1963) is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist of Romanian origins. He is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, director of the Oxford Uehiro Ce ...

also published the book ''Human Enhancement'' in March 2009. Most recently, FHI has focused on the dangers of advanced

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

(AI). In 2014, its researchers published several books on AI risk, including Stuart Armstrong's ''Smarter Than Us'' and Bostrom's '' Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies''. In 2018,

Open Philanthropy Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holden K ...

recommended a grant of up to approximately £13.4 million to FHI over three years, with a large portion conditional on successful hiring.

Existential risk

The largest topic FHI has spent time exploring is

global catastrophic risk A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanent ...

, and in particular existential risk. In a 2002 paper, Bostrom defined an "existential risk" as one "where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential". This includes scenarios where humanity is not directly harmed, but it fails to colonize space and make use of the observable universe's available resources in humanly valuable projects, as discussed in Bostrom's 2003 paper, "Astronomical Waste: The

Opportunity Cost In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a particular activity is the value or benefit given up by engaging in that activity, relative to engaging in an alternative activity. More effective it means if you chose one activity (for exampl ...

of Delayed Technological Development". Bostrom and Milan Ćirković's 2008 book ''Global Catastrophic Risks'' collects essays on a variety of such risks, both natural and anthropogenic. Possible catastrophic risks from nature include super-volcanism,

impact event An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or ...

s, and energetic astronomical events such as

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milli ...

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our ow ...

solar flare A solar flare is an intense localized eruption of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other sola ...

s, and supernovae. These dangers are characterized as relatively small and relatively well understood, though

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of i ...

s may be exceptions as a result of being more common, and of dovetailing with technological trends. Synthetic pandemics via weaponized

biological agent A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterr ...

s are given more attention by FHI. Technological outcomes the institute is particularly interested in include

anthropogenic climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

nuclear warfare Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nucle ...

and

nuclear terrorism Nuclear terrorism refers to any person or persons detonating a nuclear weapon as an act of terrorism (i.e., illegal or immoral use of violence for a political or religious cause). Some definitions of nuclear terrorism include the sabotage of a ...

molecular nanotechnology Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials. Based on Richard Feynman's vision of miniatur ...

, and

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fict ...

. In expecting the largest risks to stem from future technologies, and from advanced artificial intelligence in particular, FHI agrees with other existential risk reduction organizations, such as the

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is a research centre at the University of Cambridge, intended to study possible extinction-level threats posed by present or future technology. The co-founders of the centre are Huw Price (Be ...

and the

Machine Intelligence Research Institute The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artif ...

. FHI researchers have also studied the impact of technological progress on social and institutional risks, such as

totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...

, automation-driven unemployment, and information hazards. In 2020, FHI Senior Research Fellow Toby Ord published his book '' The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity'', in which he argues that safeguarding humanity's future is among the most important moral issues of our time.

Anthropic reasoning

FHI devotes much of its attention to exotic threats that have been little explored by other organizations, and to methodological considerations that inform existential risk reduction and forecasting. The institute has particularly emphasized

anthropic reasoning The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that there is a restrictive lower bound on how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, beca ...

in its research, as an under-explored area with general epistemological implications. Anthropic arguments FHI has studied include the

doomsday argument The Doomsday Argument (DA), or Carter catastrophe, is a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the future population of the human species, based on an estimation of the number of humans born to date. The Doomsday argument was originally p ...

, which claims that humanity is likely to go extinct soon because it is unlikely that one is observing a point in human history that is extremely early. Instead, present-day humans are likely to be near the middle of the distribution of humans that will ever live. Bostrom has also popularized the

simulation argument The simulation theory is the hypothesis that reality could be simulated—for example by quantum computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds that may or may not know that they live in ...

. A recurring theme in FHI's research is the

Fermi paradox The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high a priori likelihood of its existence, and by extension of obtaining such evidence. As a 2015 article put it ...

, the surprising absence of observable alien civilizations. Robin Hanson has argued that there must be a " Great Filter" preventing space colonization to account for the paradox. That filter may lie in the past, if intelligence is much more rare than current biology would predict; or it may lie in the future, if existential risks are even larger than is currently recognized.

Human enhancement and rationality

Closely linked to FHI's work on risk assessment, astronomical waste, and the dangers of future technologies is its work on the promise and risks of

human enhancement Human enhancement (HE) can be described as the natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body in order to enhance physical or mental capabilities. Technologies Existing technologies Three forms of human enhancement curre ...

. The modifications in question may be biological, digital, or sociological, and an emphasis is placed on the most radical hypothesized changes, rather than on the likeliest short-term innovations. FHI's

bioethics Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

research focuses on the potential consequences of

gene therapy Gene therapy is a medical field which focuses on the genetic modification of cells to produce a therapeutic effect or the treatment of disease by repairing or reconstructing defective genetic material. The first attempt at modifying human D ...

life extension Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled limit of 125 years. Several researchers in the area ...

, brain implants and

brain–computer interface A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain–machine interface (BMI) or smartbrain, is a direct communication pathway between the brain's electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. B ...

s, and

mind uploading Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer. The computer would then run a simulation of the brain's information p ...

. FHI's focus has been on methods for assessing and enhancing human intelligence and rationality, as a way of shaping the speed and direction of technological and social progress. FHI's work on human irrationality, as exemplified in cognitive heuristics and

biases Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...

, includes an ongoing collaboration with

to study the

systemic risk In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming th ...

arising from biases in modeling.

Selected publications

: '' The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity'', 2020.
Nick Bostrom: ''Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies''
2014.
Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic: ''Global Catastrophic Risks''
2011.
Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu: ''Human Enhancement''
2011.
Nick Bostrom: ''Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy''
2010.
Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg: ''Brain Emulation Roadmap''
2008.

References

External links

* {{Transhumanism footer Departments of the University of Oxford Futures studies organizations Research institutes in Oxford Research institutes established in 2005 2005 establishments in England Transhumanist organizations Existential risk organizations Organizations associated with effective altruism

History

Existential risk

Anthropic reasoning

Human enhancement and rationality

Selected publications

See also

References

External links