'Eugenics on steroids': the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute

Abstraction: FHI closure legacy of longtermism scandal and controversy

Key points:

• Founded 2005 by Nick Bostrom; received £13.3m from Open Philanthropy (Dustin Moskovitz) in 2018 and £1m from Elon Musk in 2015
• Closed April 2024 after Oxford philosophy faculty froze hiring/fundraising in 2020 and declined to renew staff contracts in late 2023
• Bostrom's 1996 email using the N-word and claiming white intellectual superiority was unearthed by critic Émile Torres; described as "last straw" for Oxford
• Critic Émile Torres calls FHI's output "noxious ideology" and "eugenics on steroids," citing Bostrom's 2002 paper discussing "dysgenic pressures"
• SBF's $300m fraud and EA board members' role in briefly ousting Sam Altman at OpenAI compounded the movement's reputational damage
• FHI's final report acknowledged failure to invest in "university politics and sociality" as a structural cause of closure

Connections: Future Of Humanity Institute · Nick Bostrom · Elon Musk · Longtermism · Effective Altruism · AI Safety

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/28/nick-bostrom-controversial-future-of-humanity-institute-closure-longtermism-affective-altruism