Deep Utopia

What Hacker News says

1. sloobOct 2026
   Y'all should checkout Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom. It's about exactly this conundrum. He's fairly rosy though about our capacity to find meaningful human interaction and activity in a "solved" world. Though some things we do for purely instrumental reasons might pass away, there's still opportunity to engage in what he calls "autotelic" activity, things we do for themselves. Like playing games, jockeying for hierarchy, sensory experience, ritual, crafts, etc. His other book, Superintelligence, is also pretty interesting--looking more at dark AI scenarios, paperclip maximizers etc.
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2. xpeAug 2025
   > Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed.

   Not necessarily. Such forces could be outvoted or out maneuvered.

   > More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries..,

   Maybe, maybe not. It might take the form of UBI or some other form that we haven’t seen in practice.

   > now add mass boredom leading to unrest.

   So many assumptions. There is no need to just assume any particular distribution of boredom across the future population of the world. Making predictions about social unrest is even more complicated.

   Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well.

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3. tim333Oct 2026
   One datapoint on the same people seeing pro and anti is Nick Bostrom (Swedish philosopher & writer) who was one of the instigators of AI doom with his 2014 book:

   Superintelligence 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dang...

   has now brought out another book on the positives:

   Deep Utopia 2024 https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/deep-utopia-life-and-meaning-in-...

   I was just watching an interview with him:

   Nick Bostrom Says We Are Clueless About What's Coming https://youtu.be/J9WBZ8BTLLg https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/opinion/interesting-times... - rattles on a bit

   Apparently Yudkowsky was influenced by the 2014 book in coming up with his stuff.

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4. jplusequaltAug 2025
   >So many assumptions.

   Then a few words later ...

   >Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well

   Oh, the irony

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5. A_D_E_P_TOct 2024
   "Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World"

   A book about what to do with life in the face of boundless possibilities, and when just about everything important has been figured out. I recall that this was a significant plot point in Permutation City -- and Egan answered the question more elegantly than Bostrom did.

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6. k310Sep 2024
   For the video-challenged:

   The following two recent books may say more. Editorial at the end of this post.

   Deep Utopia (2024)

   Blurb:

   A greyhound catching the mechanical lure—what would he actually do with it? Has he given this any thought?

   Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies changed the global conversation on AI and became a New York Times bestseller. It focused on what might happen if AI development goes wrong. But what if things go right?

   Suppose that we develop superintelligence safely, govern it well, and make good use of the cornucopian wealth and near magical technological powers that this technology can unlock. If this transition to the machine intelligence era goes well, human labor becomes obsolete. We would thus enter a condition of "post-instrumentality", in which our efforts are not needed for any practical purpose. Furthermore, at technological maturity, human nature becomes entirely malleable.

   Here we confront a challenge that 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 do we do all day?

   Deep Utopia shines new light on these old questions, and gives us glimpses of a different kind of existence, which might be ours in the future.

   Superintelligence: (2014)

   Blurb:

   Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

   The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

   But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?

   This profoundly ambitious and original book breaks down a vast track of difficult intellectual terrain. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom's work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

   Editorial: I think I figured why I can't handle videos. Other than the obvious difficulty in navigating one, a video forces me to save information in real time in my brain, whereas a digital text copy assures me that I won't miss anything, and "it's just there" for search and not taking up neurons. YMMV, of course. Transcripts are garbage. Now there's a problem to solve! Only a little formatting, the kind our lovely brains do, is needed.

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