Futures studies
Philosophy of the future—Where are we going?
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Contents
- Risk
- Technological growth
- Artificial intelligence
- Transhumanism
- My thoughts
- Annotated bibliography
- Links and encyclopedia articles
- References
Risk
Limits to growth
- The Limits to Growth (1972)
- O’Neill, G.K. (1974). The colonization of space.1
See also:
- Ecology in the Outline on Ethics
Existential threats
- Bostrom, N. (2013). Existential risk prevention as global priority.2
- Climate change
- WMDs
- Pandemics
- Asteroids
- AI
- …
- Doomsday argument
- Hanson, R. (1998). Critiquing the doomsday argument.
- Baum, S.D. et al. (2019). Long-term trajectories of human civilization.3
- Bostrom, N. (2019). The vulnerable world hypothesis.4
- Aschenbrenner, L. (2020). Existential risk and growth.
Fermi paradox
- Fermi paradox
- Freitas, R.A. (1983). Extraterrestrial intelligence in the solar system: Resolving the Fermi paradox.
- Bostrom, N. (2002). Anthropic Bias: Observation selection effects in science and philosophy.5
- Sandberg, A., Drexler, E., & Ord, T. (2018). Dissolving the Fermi paradox.6
- Hanson, R., Martin, D., McCarter, C., & Paulson, J. (2021). If loud aliens explain human earliness, quiet aliens are also rare.7
- Wong, M.L. & Bartlett, S. (2022). Asymptotic burnout and homeostatic awakening: A possible solution to the Fermi paradox?8
Technological growth
Future of computing
- Feynman, R.P. (1959). There’s plenty of room at the bottom.9
- Vinge, V. (1993). The coming technological singularity.10
See also:
Future of the internet
- Clegg, N. (2022). Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters.
Simulation argument
- Simulation argument11 and patch12
- Simulation hypothesis
Artificial intelligence
Outlook
- Good, I.J. (1965). Speculations concerning the first ultraintelligent machine.13
- Feynman, R.P. (1985). Talk: Can machines think?
- Russell & Norvig14
- Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.15
- Armstrong, S., Sotala, K., & OhEigeartaigh, S. S. (2014). The errors, insights and lessons of famous AI predictions–and what they mean for the future.16
- Urban, T. (2015). The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence.17
- Urban, T. (2015). The AI Revolution, Part 2: Our Immortality or Extinction
- Marcus, G. (2018). Deep learning: A critical appraisal.18
- Gwern. (2020). The scaling hypothesis.
- Zhang, D. et al. (2021). The AI Index 2021 Annual Report.19
- Zhang, D. et al. (2022). The AI Index 2022 Annual Report.20
- Marcus, G. (2022). Deep learning is hitting a wall: What would it take for artificial intelligence to make real progress?
- Benaich, N. & Hogarth, I. (2022). State of AI Report 2022.
- Steinhardt, J. (2023). Forecasting ML Benchmarks in 2023.
- Bubeck, S. et al. (2023). Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4.21
- Maslej, N. et al. (2023). The AI Index 2023 Annual Report.22
- Maslej, N. et al. (2024). The AI Index 2024 Annual Report.23
- Zuckerberg, M. (2024). Open source AI is the path forward.
- Perrault, R. et al. (2025). Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2025.24
- Silver, D. & Sutton. R.S. (2025). Welcome to the Era of Experience.
See also:
Risks
- Jeremy Howard warning about the abilities of models like GPT-2:
We have the technology to totally fill Twitter, email, and the web up with reasonable-sounding, context-appropriate prose, which would drown out all other speech and be impossible to filter.25
- Carroll, S. & Russell, S. (2020). Video: Stuart Russell on making artificial intelligence compatible with humans. Mindscape 94.
- Russell: AI gives us the Midas touch
- Kokotajlo, D. (2021). What 2026 looks like.
- Karnofsky, H. (2022). AI could defeat all of us combined.
- Cotra, A. (2022). Two-year update on my personal AI timelines.
- Future of Life Institute. (2023). Pause giant AI experiments: An open letter.
- Future of Life Institute. (2023). Policymaking in the Pause: What can policymakers do now to combat risks from advanced AI systems?.
- Altman, S. (2023). Planning for AGI and beyond.
- Finnveden, L., Riedel, J., & Shulman, C. (2023). AGI and lock-in.
- Aschenbrenner, L. (2024). Situational Awareness: The decade ahead.26
- Amodei, D. (2024). Machines of loving grace.
- Gabriel, I. et al. (DeepMind). (2024). The ethics of advanced AI assistants.27
- Longpre, S. (2024). Consent in crisis: The rapid decline of the AI data commons.28
- Kokotajlo, D., Alexander, S., Larsen, T., Lifland, E., & Dean, R. (2025). AI 2027.
- Bengio, Y. et al. (2025). International AI Safety Report.29
Transhumanism
- Nietzsche, F. (1883). Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
- Übermensch
- Haldane, J.B.S. (1924). Daedalus; or, Science and the Future.
- Russell, B. (1924). Icarus, or the future of science.
- Huxley, Julian (1957). Transhumanism.
- Bostrom, N. (2005). The fable of the dragon-tyrant.30
My thoughts
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Annotated bibliography
Bostrom, N. (2002). Anthropic Bias: Observation selection effects in science and philosophy.
- TODO.
My thoughts
- TODO.
Bostrom, N. (2003). Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
- TODO.
My thoughts
- TODO.
Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.
- TODO.
My thoughts
- TODO.
More articles to do
- TODO.
Links and encyclopedia articles
SEP
IEP
Wikipedia
Others
Videos
References
Armstrong, S., Sotala, K., & OhEigeartaigh, S. S. (2014). The errors, insights and lessons of famous AI predictions–and what they mean for the future. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 26, 317–342. https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/FAIC.pdf
Aschenbrenner, L. (2024). Situational Awareness: The decade ahead. https://situational-awareness.ai/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/situationalawareness.pdf
Baum, S.D. et al. (2019). Long-term trajectories of human civilization. Foresight, 21, 55–83.
Bengio, Y. et al. (2025). International AI Safety Report. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17805
Bostrom, N. (2002). Anthropic Bias: Observation selection effects in science and philosophy. Routledge.
———. (2003). Are you living in a computer simulation? Philosophical Quarterly, 53, 243–255.
———. (2005). The fable of the dragon-tyrant. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31, 273–277. https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
———. (2011). A patch for the simulation argument. Analysis, 71, 54–61.
———. (2013). Existential risk prevention as global priority. Global Policy, 4, 15–31. https://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf
———. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press.
———. (2019). The vulnerable world hypothesis,. Global Policy, 10, 455–476. https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
Bubeck, S. et al. (2023). Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
Feynman, R. P. (1959). There’s plenty of room at the bottom. https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/1976/1/1960Bottom.pdf
Gabriel, I. et al. (2024). The ethics of advanced AI assistants. https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/DeepMind.com/Blog/ethics-of-advanced-ai-assistants/the-ethics-of-advanced-ai-assistants-2024-i.pdf
Good, I. J. (1965). Speculations concerning the first ultraintelligent machine. Advances in Computers, 6, 31–88. https://blog.biocomm.ai/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IJ-Good.-Speculations-Concerning-the-First-Ultraintelligent-Machine.pdf
Hanson, R., Martin, D., McCarter, C., & Paulson, J. (2021). If loud aliens explain human earliness, quiet aliens are also rare. The Astrophysical Journal, 922, 182. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac2369
Longpre, S. (2024). Consent in crisis: The rapid decline of the AI data commons. https://www.dataprovenance.org/Consent_in_Crisis.pdf
Marcus, G. (2018). Deep learning: A critical appraisal. https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00631
Maslej, N. et al. (2023). The AI Index 2023 Annual Report. https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/HAI_AI-Index-Report_2023.pdf
———. (2024). The AI Index 2024 Annual Report. https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/HAI_AI-Index-Report-2024.pdf
O’Neill, G. K. (1974). The colonization of space. Physics Today, 27, 32–40. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/27/9/32/429507/The-colonization-of-spaceCareful-engineering-and
Perrault, R. et al. (2025). Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2025. Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University. https://hai-production.s3.amazonaws.com/files/hai_ai_index_report_2025.pdf
Russell, S. & Norvig, P. (1995). Artificial Intelligence: A modern approach (3rd ed.). Pearson.
Sandberg, A., Drexler, E., & Ord, T. (2018). Dissolving the Fermi paradox. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
Urban, T. (2015). The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence. https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
Vincent, J. (2019). OpenAI’s new multitalented AI writes, translates, and slanders: A step forward in AI text-generation that also spells trouble. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224704/ai-machine-learning-language-models-read-write-openai-gpt2
Vinge, V. (1993). The coming technological singularity. https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html
Wong, M. L. & Bartlett, S. (2022). Asymptotic burnout and homeostatic awakening: A possible solution to the Fermi paradox? Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 19, 20220029. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029
Zhang, D. et al. (2021). The AI Index 2021 Annual Report. Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University. https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06312
———. (2022). The AI Index 2022 Annual Report. Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University. https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022-AI-Index-Report_Master.pdf
O’Neill (1974).↩︎
Bostrom (2013).↩︎
Baum, S.D. et al. (2019).↩︎
Bostrom (2019).↩︎
Bostrom (2002).↩︎
Sandberg, Drexler, & Ord (2018).↩︎
Hanson, Martin, McCarter, & Paulson (2021).↩︎
Wong & Bartlett (2022).↩︎
Feynman (1959).↩︎
Vinge (1993).↩︎
Bostrom (2003).↩︎
Bostrom (2011).↩︎
Good (1965).↩︎
Russell & Norvig (1995).↩︎
Bostrom (2014).↩︎
Armstrong, Sotala, & OhEigeartaigh (2014).↩︎
Urban (2015).↩︎
Marcus (2018).↩︎
Zhang, D. et al. (2021).↩︎
Zhang, D. et al. (2022).↩︎
Bubeck, S. et al. (2023).↩︎
Maslej, N. et al. (2023).↩︎
Maslej, N. et al. (2024).↩︎
Perrault, R. et al. (2025).↩︎
Vincent (2019).↩︎
Aschenbrenner (2024).↩︎
Gabriel, I. et al. (2024).↩︎
Longpre (2024).↩︎
Bengio, Y. et al. (2025).↩︎
Bostrom (2005).↩︎
