Deep Utopia - by Nick Bostrom (Hardcover)

About the Book

"If the AI transition goes well, human labor becomes obsolete. Furthermore, at technological maturity, human nature becomes entirely malleable. We will thus enter a condition of 'post-instrumentality', in which our efforts are not needed for any practical purpose. 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 a new light on these old questions, giving us glimpses of a different kind of existence, which might be ours in the future." -- Dust jacket.

Book Synopsis

Gold Medal Winner, Living Now Book Awards 2024

Best Books of 2024, Kirkus Reviews

Winner, Independent Press Awards 2024

Honorable Mention, Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2024 (Religion/Spirituality)

Winner, PenCraft Book Awards 2024 (Fiction: Intrigue)

Best AI Books of 2024, The Information

Winner, American Book Fest (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre)

Winner, 2025 American Legacy Book Award (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre)

Bostrom's last book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), sparked a global conversation on AI that continues and widens to this day. That book, which despite its academic style became a New York Times bestseller, focused on what would happen if AI goes wrong.

But what if AI goes right? Suppose we succeed in developing superintelligence safely and that we make good use of the almost magical powers this unlocks. We would then achieve full unemployment. More than that, we would transition into a "post-instrumental condition," in which human effort is not needed for any practical purpose. This would be a condition of material abundance. Human nature itself would become fully malleable.

In such a solved world, what would be the point of human existence? What could give meaning to our lives? Which old values will we have to sacrifice, and which new values will we be able to realize to wonderful degrees?

Deep Utopia--a work that is again years ahead of its time--takes the readers on a journey into some of the most profound questions that arise as we dissolve the limits of our current mode of being. It is a lush, playful, difficult, and human text that interleaves fiction stories and philosophical lectures that show us a glimpse of a different kind of existence-one that might be ours in the not-so-distant future.

Review Quotes

"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

"A major contribution to human thought and ways of thinking." --Robert Lawrence Kuhn

"Brilliant! Hilarious, poignant, insightful, clever, important." --Prof. Thaddeus Metz

"When technology has solved humanity's deepest problems, what is left to do? ... argues that beyond the post-scarcity world lies a 'post-instrumental' one ... With the arrival of AI Utopia, this would be put to the test. Quite a lot would ride on the result." --The Economist

"Reminiscent of Plato's dialogues--with a 21st-century twist." --Stuff (NZ)

"Bostrom is a marvelously energetic prose stylist ... Wry understated humor that's often very quiet in its punchlines. ... A complex and stimulatingly provocative look at just how possible a fulfilling life might be." --Kirkus Reviews

"One of the strangest ... books I've ever read." --Popular Science Books

"A really fun, and important, book... the writing is brilliant... incredibly rich... a constant parade of fascinating ideas." --Prof. Guy Kahane, Oxford University

"Wow." --Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University; Co-author of 'The Second Machine Age'