PARIS, Aug 27 — Silicon Valley’s favourite philosophy, longtermism, has helped to frame the debate on artificial intelligence around the idea of human extinction.
Yet the movement and linked ideologies like transhumanism and effective altruism hold huge sway in universities from Oxford to Stanford and throughout the tech sector. Ultimately critics say this fringe movement is holding far too much influence over public debates over the future of humanity.Longtermists believe we are dutybound to try to produce the best outcomes for the greatest number of humans.They look to the far future and see trillions upon trillions of humans floating through space, colonising new worlds.And because there are so many of them, they carry much more weight than today’s specimens.
“So long as that’s true, there’s still a chance of reaching the stars someday,” he wrote, though he later deleted the message.Longtermism grew out of work done by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in the 1990s and 2000s around existential risk and transhumanism — the idea that humans can be augmented by technology.British biologist Julian Huxley, who coined the term transhumanism, was also president of the British Eugenics Society in the 1950s and 1960s.
Altman has credited him with getting OpenAI funded and suggested in February he deserved a Nobel peace prize.