#83 – Nick Bostrom: Simulation and Superintelligence

Nick Bostrom is a philosopher at University of Oxford and the
director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He has worked on
fascinating and important ideas in existential risks, simulation
hypothesis, human enhancement ethics, and the risks of
superintelligent AI systems, including in his book
Superintelligence. I can see talking to Nick multiple times on this
podcast, many hours each time, but we have to start somewhere.
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https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w EPISODE LINKS: Nick's website:
https://nickbostrom.com/ Future of Humanity Institute: -
https://twitter.com/fhioxford - https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ Books: -
Superintelligence: https://amzn.to/2JckX83 Wikipedia: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_indifference -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk This
conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence
podcast. If you would like to get more information about this
podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman
on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can
watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the
podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on
Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the
episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the
timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 02:48
- Simulation hypothesis and simulation argument 12:17 -
Technologically mature civilizations 15:30 - Case 1: if something
kills all possible civilizations 19:08 - Case 2: if we lose
interest in creating simulations 22:03 - Consciousness 26:27 -
Immersive worlds 28:50 - Experience machine 41:10 - Intelligence
and consciousness 48:58 - Weighing probabilities of the simulation
argument 1:01:43 - Elaborating on Joe Rogan conversation 1:05:53 -
Doomsday argument and anthropic reasoning 1:23:02 - Elon Musk
1:25:26 - What's outside the simulation? 1:29:52 -
Superintelligence 1:47:27 - AGI utopia 1:52:41 - Meaning of life