Deep Utopia
Life and Meaning in a Solved World
Nick Bostrom (Ideapress, 2024)
Gold Medal Winner,
Living Now Book Awards 2024
Best Books of 2024,
Kirkus Reviews
Winner,
American Book Fest (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre)
Honorable Mention,
Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2024 (Religion/Spirituality)
Best AI Books of 2024,
The Information
Winner,
Independent Press Awards 2024
Winner,
PenCraft Book Awards 2024 (Fiction: Intrigue)
Winner,
2025 American Legacy Book Award (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre)
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 reader 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.
“Best AI Books of 2024”
—The Information
“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’
About the author
Nick Bostrom, who has been referred to as “the Swedish superbrain”, has a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, along with philosophy. He is one of the most-cited philosophers in the world.
He was until recently Professor at Oxford University, where he served as the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute from 2005 until its closure in 2024. He is the Founder and Principal Researcher of the nonprofit Macrostrategy Research Initiative.
Bostrom is the author of 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), a prescient New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI that continues to this day. His work has pioneered many of the ideas that frame current thinking about humanity’s future (e.g. the concept of existential risk, the simulation argument, the vulnerable world hypothesis, differential technological development, crucial considerations, the moral status of digital minds, etc.). His most recent book, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, was published in 2024.
His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages; he is a repeat main-stage TED speaker; he has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit.
For more background, see profiles in e.g. The New Yorker or Aeon.
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