Deep Utopia

Life and Meaning in a Solved World

By: Nick Bostrom

Narrated by: David Timson

*Gold Medal Winner, Living Now Book Awards 2024*

Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014) sparked a global conversation on AI that continues to this day. That book, which became a surprise New York Times bestseller, focused on what might happen if AI development goes wrong.

But what if things go right? Suppose we develop superintelligence safely and ethically, and that we make good use of the almost magical powers this technology would unlock. We would transition into an era in which human labor becomes obsolete—a “post-instrumental” condition in which human efforts are not needed for any practical purpose. Furthermore, human nature itself becomes fully malleable.

The challenge we confront here is not technological but philosophical and spiritual. In such a “solved world”, what is the point of human existence? What gives meaning to life? What would we do and experience?

Deep Utopia—a work that is again decades ahead of its time—takes the listener who is able to follow on a journey into the heart of some of the profoundest questions before us, questions we didn’t even know to ask. It shows us a glimpse of a different kind of existence, which might be ours in the future.

©2024 Nick Bostrom (P)2024 Nick Bostrom

Critic reviews

“This is a wondrous book. It is mind-expanding. It is poetic. It is moving. It is funny. The writing is superb. Every page is full of ideas.” —Russ Roberts, President of Shalem College

“Fascinating.” —The New York Times

“Yeah.” —Elon Musk

Too much, too soon?

I am forever in the debt of Nick Bostrom for the insights he shared in Super Intelligence, however, Deep Utopia is far less accessible, relevant, salient nor interesting. That last is unfair, it is interesting that he creates a fictional narrative of himself giving a lecture. It is interesting that he chooses to sprinkle into the story another seemingly unrelated thread recounting the travails of Fyodor the fox and Pignolious the pig as they seek to improve the society of the forest around them through decidedly unconventional means. But I am not sure that these literary constructs “work.”
If “work” is a unit of measure tied to one’s likelihood to finish the book then, maybe it does work. But I have to say I would not be comfortable recommending this book to anyone. There were just too many times when I found myself thinking not about the concepts discussed in the content rather about the excess that content represents.
An alternate title for this review might be, “High percentage of unnecessary words.” Ceteris peribus, it could have been half as long and just as replete with meaning. In other words, it has ~100% too many words.
In fairness toNick, I will remain open to the possibility that I missed something of foundational importance.

I highly recommend Deep Utopia

There are lots of books describing what will happen if the AI revolution turns bad but this is the first one I've heard of that discusses what will happen if things go right, how will we find meaning in our lives if machines can do everything better than we can? Bostrom suggests there may be several ways it might still be possible to have a meaningful life. Parts of the book remind me a little of Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, and that is very high praise, although Bostrom is more interested in philosophy than science or mathematics.

Boring incoheren 20hrt rample

Super intelligence was well organized, focused, and clear. This book is none of those things. TL;DR, wire heading. Boring, too abstract to get anything from