Anders Sandberg | University of Oxford (original) (raw)

Papers by Anders Sandberg

Science and Engineering Ethics

The biosphere represents the global sum of all ecosystems. According to a prominent view in envir... more The biosphere represents the global sum of all ecosystems. According to a prominent view in environmental ethics, ecocentrism, these ecosystems matter for their own sake, and not only because they contribute to human ends. As such, some ecocentrists are critical of the modern industrial civilization, and a few even argue that an irreversible collapse of the modern industrial civilization would be a good thing. However, taking a longer view and considering the eventual destruction of the biosphere by astronomical processes, we argue that humans, a species with considerable technological know-how and industrial capacity could intervene to extend the lifespan of Earth’s biosphere, perhaps by several billion years. We argue that human civilization, despite its flaws and harmful impacts on many ecosystems, is the biosphere’s best hope of avoiding premature destruction. We argue that proponents of ecocentrism, even those who wholly disregard anthropocentric values, have a strong moral rea...

How much value can our decisions create? We argue that unless our current understanding of physic... more How much value can our decisions create? We argue that unless our current understanding of physics is wrong in fairly fundamental ways, there exists an upper limit of value relevant to our decisions. First, due to the speed of light and the definition and conception of economic growth, the limit to economic growth is a restrictive one. Additionally, a related far larger but still finite limit exists for value in a much broader sense due to the physics of information and the ability of physical beings to place value on outcomes. We discuss how this argument can handle lexicographic preferences, probabilities, and the implications for infinite ethics and ethical uncertainty.

foresight, 2019

PurposeThis paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific ... more PurposeThis paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist.Design/methodology/approachThis paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos.FindingsStatus quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future...

ABSTRACT If the meaning of sport is increasingly to do with what it is to be human, then Oscar Pi... more ABSTRACT If the meaning of sport is increasingly to do with what it is to be human, then Oscar Pistorius is the thin end of a fat wedge, says Anders Sandberg

The American Journal of Bioethics, 2013

preprint available at http://hanson. gmu. edu/filluniv. pdf, 1998

Attempts to model interstellar colonization may seem hopelessly compromised by uncertain-ties reg... more Attempts to model interstellar colonization may seem hopelessly compromised by uncertain-ties regarding the technologies and preferences of advanced civilizations. If light speed limits travel speeds, however, then a selection effect may eventually determine frontier ...

Некоторые риски имеют исключительно высокие ставки. Например, всемирная пандемия или столкновение... more Некоторые риски имеют исключительно высокие ставки. Например, всемирная пандемия или столкновение с астероидом могу убить более миллиарда людей. К счастью, научные вычисления часто дают очень низкие оценки вероятности таких катастроф. В этой статье мы хотим отметить, что есть важные новые методологические проблемы, которые возникают при оценке рисков глобальных катастроф, и мы сосредотачиваемся на проблеме оценки вероятностей. Когда ...

Мы описываем значительные практические последствия от принятия в расчет антропного искажения (ant... more Мы описываем значительные практические последствия от принятия в расчет антропного искажения (antropic bias–этот термин происходит от термина «антропный принцип» и описывает систематическую ошибку, возникающую в результате неучёта изменения числа наблюдателей в результате некоторых событий–прим. пер.) при выводе предсказаний относительно редких случайных катастрофических событий. Оценки вероятности рисков, связанных с такими катастрофическими событиями как ...

There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life fo... more There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioral and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change.

Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies

This paper explores the ethical implications of a possible future technology, namely cryonics (i.... more This paper explores the ethical implications of a possible future technology, namely cryonics (i.e. the preservation of an entire organism at ultra-low temperatures for eventual revival) of embryos/fetuses extracted from the uterus. We argue that more research should be conducted in order to explore the feasibility of such technology. We highlight the advantages that this option would offer, including the foreseeable prevention of a considerable number of abortions.

Obviously this is a hugely ambitious project far outside current capabilities, possibly not even ... more Obviously this is a hugely ambitious project far outside current capabilities, possibly not even feasible in theory. However, should such a technology ever become feasible there are good reasons to expect the consequences to be dramatic: it would enable software intelligence, copyable human capital, new ethical problems, and (depending on philosophical outlook) immortality and a posthuman species. Even if one does not ascribe a high probability to WBE being ever feasible it makes sense to watch for trends indicating that it may be emerging, since adapting to its emergence may require significant early and global effort taking decades.

arXiv: Popular Physics, 2016

If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far fu... more If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a 103010^{30}1030 multiplier of achievable computation. We hence suggest the "aestivation hypothesis": the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilizations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras. This paper analyzes the assumptions going into the hypothesis and how physical law and observational evidence constrain the motivations of aliens compatible with the hypothesis.

Robot Sex, 2017

In September 2015 a well-publicised Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR) was launched. Modelled on ... more In September 2015 a well-publicised Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR) was launched. Modelled on the longer-standing Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the CASR opposes the development of sex robots on the grounds that the technology is being developed with a particular model of female-male relations (the prostitute-john model) in mind, and that this will prove harmful in various ways. In this chapter, we consider carefully the merits of campaigning against such a technology. We make three main arguments. First, we argue that the particular claims advanced by the CASR are unpersuasive, partly due to a lack of clarity about the campaign’s aims and partly due to substantive defects in the main ethical objections put forward by campaign’s founder(s). Second, we argue that it would be very difficult to endorse a general campaign against sex robots unless one embraced a highly conservative attitude towards the ethics of sex, which is likely to be unpalatable to those who are active in the c...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Sigmoids (AKA s-curves or logistic curves) are commonly used in a diverse spectrum of disciplines... more Sigmoids (AKA s-curves or logistic curves) are commonly used in a diverse spectrum of disciplines as models for time-varying phenomena showing initial acceleration followed by slowing: technology diffusion, cumulative cases of an epidemic, population growth towards a carrying capacity, etc. Existing work demonstrates that retrospective fit of data is often impressive. We show that in time series data, the future fit tends to be poor unless the data covers the entire range from before to after the inflection point. We discuss the theoretical reasons for this: the growth data provides little information about the damping term (and vice-versa). As a consequence, forecasting with sigmoids tends to be very unreliable. We suggest some practical approaches to improving the viability of forecasting sigmoid models.

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 2019

How individuals tend to evaluate the combination of their own and other's payoffs-Social Value Or... more How individuals tend to evaluate the combination of their own and other's payoffs-Social Value Orientations-is likely to be a potential target of future moral enhancers. However, the stability of cooperation in human societies has been buttressed by evolved mildly prosocial orientations. If they could be * Acknowledgements: The ideas behind this paper were first discussed in a seminar and subsequent discussion at the Centre for Research in Social Simulation in Surrey, where Jen Badham, Juan Cano and Corinna Elsenbroich helped properly shaping our models and assumptions. The paper also benefited from discussions with Brian Earp on cooperation and individualism. Emma Bates and Paulo Salem gave much appreciated comments to improve clarity. We have also benefited from the comments and questions from the attendees of the Belgrade "Enhancing the understanding of enhancement" conference October 27-28 2015.

Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees, 2017

How individuals tend to evaluate the combination of their own and other's payoffs-social valu... more How individuals tend to evaluate the combination of their own and other's payoffs-social value orientations-is likely to be a potential target of future moral enhancers. However, the stability of cooperation in human societies has been buttressed by evolved mildly prosocial orientations. If they could be changed, would this destabilize the cooperative structure of society? We simulate a model of moral enhancement in which agents play games with each other and can enhance their orientations based on maximizing personal satisfaction. We find that given the assumption that very low payoffs lead agents to be removed from the population, there is a broadly stable prosocial attractor state. However, the balance between prosociality and individual payoff-maximization is affected by different factors. Agents maximizing their own satisfaction can produce emergent shifts in society that reduce everybody's satisfaction. Moral enhancement considerations should take the issues of social ...

Social Epistemology, 2016

In some situations a number of agents each have the ability to undertake an initiative that would... more In some situations a number of agents each have the ability to undertake an initiative that would have significant effects on the others. Suppose that each of these agents is purely motivated by an altruistic concern for the common good. We show that if each agent acts on her own personal judgment as to whether the initiative should be undertaken, then the initiative will be undertaken more often than is optimal. We suggest that this phenomenon, which we call the unilateralist's curse, arises in many contexts, including some that are important for public policy. To lift the curse, we propose a principle of conformity, which would discourage unilateralist action. We consider three different models for how this principle could be implemented, and respond to an objection that could be raised against it.

Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 2014

The enhancement debate in neuroscience and biomedical ethics tends to focus on the augmentation o... more The enhancement debate in neuroscience and biomedical ethics tends to focus on the augmentation of certain capacities or functions: memory, learning, attention, and the like. Typically, the point of contention is whether these augmentative enhancements should be considered permissible for individuals with no particular "medical" disadvantage along any of the dimensions of interest. Less frequently addressed in the literature, however, is the fact that sometimes the diminishment of a capacity or function, under the right set of circumstances, could plausibly contribute to an individual's overall well-being: more is not always better, and sometimes less is more. Such cases may be especially likely, we suggest, when trade-offs in our modern environment have shifted since the environment of evolutionary adaptation. In this article, we introduce the notion of "diminishment as enhancement" and go on to defend a welfarist conception of enhancement. We show how this conception resolves a number of definitional ambiguities in the enhancement literature, and we suggest that it can provide a useful framework for thinking about the use of emerging neurotechnologies to promote human flourishing.

There is no strong reason to believe human level intelligence represents an upper limit of the ca... more There is no strong reason to believe human level intelligence represents an upper limit of the capacity of artificial intelligence, should it be realized. This poses serious safety issues, since a superintelligent system would have great power to direct the future according to its possibly flawed goals or motivation systems. Solving this issue in general has proven to be considerably harder than expected. This paper looks at one particular approach, Oracle AI. An Oracle AI is an AI that does not act in the world except by answering questions. Even this narrow approach presents considerable challenges and we analyse and critique various methods of control. In general this form of limited AI might be safer than unrestricted AI, but still remains potentially dangerous.