Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

Nick Bostrom Ph.D. is a philosopher at Oxford University, and the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute. He co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 and is a frequent spokesperson and commentator in the media. He has been a consultant for the Central Intelligence Agency (Washington, DC), and for the European Commission and the European Group on Ethics (Brussels). Dr. Bostrom’s research interests include the philosophy of science, probability theory, and the ethical and strategic implications of anticipated technologies. He has a background in cosmology, computational neuroscience, mathematical logic, philosophy, and artificial intelligence, and is the author of the book Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (Routledge, New York, 2002).

I will argue that we need to expand our concept of dignity to encompass posthuman dignity as well as human dignity. If human dignity is the grounding for human rights, this move directly leads us to consider the question of posthuman rights. I will address the issue of such rights in the context of the creation of artificial minds (e.g. advanced machine intelligences) and discuss some tentative ethical principles for defining our rights and responsibilities relative to our hypothetical future machine progeny, and their rights and responsibilities relative to their creators.