Book review: Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, by Nick Bostrom.

Bostrom's previous book, Superintelligence, triggered expressions of concern. In his latest work, he describes his hopes for the distant future, presumably to limit the risk that fear of AI will lead to a The Butlerian Jihad-like scenario.

While Bostrom is relatively cautious about endorsing specific features of a utopia, he clearly expresses his dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. For instance, in a footnoted rant about preserving nature, he writes:

Imagine that some technologically advanced civilization arrived on Earth ... Imagine they said: "The most important thing is to preserve the ecosystem in its natural splendor. In particular, the predator populations must be preserved: the psychopath killers, the fascist goons, the despotic death squads ... What a tragedy if this rich natural diversity were replaced with a monoculture of healthy, happy, well-fed people living in peace and harmony." ... this would be appallingly callous.

The book begins as if addressing a broad audience, then drifts into philosophy that seems obscure, leading me to wonder if it's intended as a parody of aimless academic philosophy.

Future Technology

Bostrom focuses on technological rather than political forces that might enable utopia. He cites the example of people with congenital analgesia, who live without pain but often face health issues. This dilemma could be mitigated by designing a safer environment.

Bostrom emphasizes more ambitious options:

But another approach would be to create a mechanism that serves the same function as pain without being painful. Imagine an "exoskin": a layer of nanotech sensors so thin that we can't feel it or see it, but which monitors our skin surface for noxious stimuli. If we put our hand on a hot plate, ... the mechanism contracts our muscle fibers so as to make our hand withdraw

Mass Unemployment

As technology surpasses human abilities at most tasks, we may eventually face a post-work society. Hiring humans would become less appealing when robots can better understand tasks, work faster, and cost less than feeding a human worker.

That conclusion shouldn't be controversial given Bostrom's assumptions about technology. Unfortunately, those assumptions about technology are highly controversial, at least among people who haven't paid close attention to...