What We Owe the Future

“Whether the future is wonderful or terrible is, in part, up to us.”

“But just as the world does not stop at our doorstep or our country’s borders, neither does it stop with our generation, or the next.”

“I have sought love… because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy.”

“Distance in time is like distance in space. People matter even if they live thousands of miles away. Likewise, they matter even if they live thousands of years hence.”

“This book is about longtermism: the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.11”

“Writing gave ideas the power to influence society for thousands of years; artificial intelligence could give them influence that lasts millions.”

“A better word would be “eutopia,” meaning “good place”—something to strive for.”

“These ideas are common sense. A popular proverb says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”

“morality, in central part, is about putting ourselves in others’ shoes and treating their interests as we do our own.”

“Whether the future is governed by values that are authoritarian or egalitarian, benevolent or sadistic, exploratory or rigid, might well be determined by what happens this century. Figure 2.2.”

“Superintelligence,”

“AGI agents are potentially immortal.”

“We live in an era that involves an extraordinary amount of change. To see this, consider the rate of global economic growth, which in recent decades averaged around 3 percent per year.51 This is historically unprecedented. For the first 290,000 years of humanity’s existence, global growth was close to 0 percent per year; in the agricultural era that increased to around 0.1 percent, and it accelerated from there after the Industrial Revolution. It’s only in the last hundred years that the world economy has grown at a rate above 2 percent per year. Putting this another way: from 10,000 BC onwards, it took many hundreds of years for the world economy to double in size. The most recent doubling took just”

“If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds round blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.”

“This book is about longtermism: the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.”

“Some entrepreneurs hope to abandon meat-based bodies altogether and live on in digital form through computer emulation of their brains.”

“Some personal consumption decisions have a much greater impact than reusing plastic bags. One that is close to my heart is vegetarianism. The first major autonomous model decision I made was to become vegetarian, which I did at age 18 the day I left my parents’ home. This was an important and meaningful decision to me, and I remain vegetarian to this day. But how impactful was it, compared to other things I could do. I did it in large part because of animal welfare, but lets just focus on its effect on climate change. By going vegetarian, you avert around 0.8 tons of Carbon Dioxide equivalent every year. A metric that combines the effect of different greenhouse gases. This is a big deal, it is about 1/10th of my total carbon footprint. Over the course of 80 years, I would avert around 64 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. But it turns out that other things you can do are radically more impactful. Suppose that an American earning the median US income were to donate 10% of that income which would be about $3,000 to the clean air task force an extremely cost effective organization that promotes innovation in neglected clean energy technologies. According to the best estimate I know of, this donation would reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions by an expected 3,000 tons per year. This is far bigger than effect of going vegetarian for your entire life. Note that the funding situation in climate change is changing fast, so when you hear this, the clean air task force may already be fully funded. The organization giving what we can keeps up an up to date list of the best charities in climate and other areas.”

“If the Milky Way were the size of Earth, our solar system would be ten centimetres across and hundreds of metres would separate us from our neighbours.”

“To get a sense of how good, we can look at some of the progress humanity has made over the last few centuries. Two hundred years ago, average life expectancy was less than thirty; today, it is seventy-three.15 Back then, over 80 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty; now, less than 10 percent does.16 Back then, only about 10 percent of adults could read; today, more than 85 percent can.17”

“There are things we can do to steer the future onto a better course. We can increase the chance of a wonderful future by improving the values that guide society and by carefully navigating the development of AI. We can ensure we get a future at all by preventing the creation or use of new weapons of mass destruction and by maintaining peace between the world’s great powers. These are challenging issues, but what we do about them makes a real difference. So I shifted my priorities.”

“Humanity might last for millions or even billions of years to come. But the rate of change of the modern world can only continue for thousands of years. What this means is that we are living through an extraordinary chapter in humanity’s story. Compared to both the past and the future, every decade we live through sees an extremely unusual number of economic and technological changes.”