1 Here by information I might mean data or facts or rules, and by saving energy I mean saving ‘free’ energy. Personally, I’ve developed the following definition of intelligence: “Use of information to take decisions which save energy in pursuit of a given task”. On the other hand, superintelligence is defined as outperforming humans in every intelligent capability that they express. In common with many contributions to the debate on artificial intelligence, Bostrom never defines what he means by intelligence. So let’s start at the beginning and put the book in context by trying to understand what is meant by the term “superintelligence” Defining Intelligence He is a professor of philosophy but has an impressive array of background degrees in areas such as mathematics, logic, philosophy and computational neuroscience. For the moment the review focuses on counter-arguments and perceived omissions (the post already got too long with just covering those).īostrom considers various routes we have to forming intelligent machines and what the possible outcomes might be from developing such technologies. In an ideal world, this post would certainly have contained more summaries of the books arguments and perhaps a later update will improve on that aspect. In that light, and given this series of blog posts is about the “Future of AI”, it seemed important to read the book and discuss his ideas. Not just in artificial intelligence, but in a range of different domains (politicians, physicists, business leaders). The book has had an effect on the thinking of many of the world’s thought leaders. This post is a discussion of Nick Bostrom’s book “ Superintelligence”.

Update 4: In October Maciej Ceglowski gave talk on “Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People” and provided the transcript here.

You can find a recording of the talk here. Update 3: The Future of Humanity Institute kindly invited me to give a seminar and have a discussion about these issues. I’ve added a clarification that the defintion is ‘for a given task’. Update 2: Both Rob Bensinger and Michael Tetelman rightly pointed out that my intelligence definition was sloppily defined. Update: readers of the post have also pointed out this critique by Ernest Davis and this response to Davis by Rob Bensinger.

Paths dangers strategies