It’s over. After nearly two decades of staring into the abyss of human extinction, the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University officially shut its doors in early 2024. You might think a research center dedicated to the end of the world would go out with a bang, some cinematic flair. Honestly? It was mostly administrative red tape and a messy breakup with the university hierarchy.
The FHI wasn't just another dusty academic department. It was the "North Star" for the effective altruism movement. It was where Nick Bostrom—a man who basically pioneered the way we freak out about AI—spent years arguing that we might all be living in a computer simulation or that a superintelligent AI could accidentally turn the entire planet into paperclips.
What was the Future of Humanity Institute, anyway?
Nick Bostrom started the place in 2005. Back then, talking about "existential risk" (X-risk) made you sound like a guy wearing a tinfoil hat in a basement. But Bostrom, along with folks like Toby Ord, turned it into a high-brow intellectual powerhouse. They weren't looking at "small" problems like the next quarterly earnings report. They were looking at the "Longtermism" perspective.
Think about it this way: if humanity survives for millions of years, there could be trillions of people who haven't been born yet. To the folks at the Future of Humanity Institute, those future lives are just as valuable as ours. So, if there’s even a 1% chance that a rogue AI or a lab-leaked pathogen wipes us out, stopping that is the most important thing anyone could ever do. It’s simple math, but it leads to some pretty wild conclusions.
The Oxford Divorce: Why did it close?
The closure wasn't because they ran out of things to worry about. Far from it. The world is more chaotic than ever.
The real story is a bit more "office politics" than "apocalypse." According to a final report issued by the FHI team, they faced "insurmountable institutional roadblocks" within Oxford's Faculty of Philosophy. Basically, the university stopped letting them hire new staff and wouldn't renew contracts for the ones they had. There was a weird tension between a fast-moving, billionaire-funded research group and a centuries-old university that moves at the speed of a glacier.
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There was also the controversy factor. You can't ignore it. Nick Bostrom found himself in hot water over an old email from the 90s containing racist language that surfaced in early 2023. While he apologized, the damage to the "brand" was real. Pair that with the collapse of FTX—since Sam Bankman-Fried was a massive donor to these types of "longtermist" causes—and the vibes around the Future of Humanity Institute got very dark, very fast.
The Big Ideas They Left Behind
They didn't just sit around drinking tea and worrying. They produced some of the most influential (and controversial) philosophy of the 21st century.
The Simulation Argument
You’ve heard this one. Bostrom argued that at least one of these three things is likely true:
- Humans go extinct before reaching a "post-human" stage.
- Post-human civilizations aren't interested in running simulations of their ancestors.
- We are almost certainly living in a simulation right now.
It sounds like The Matrix, but the logic is annoyingly hard to debunk.
The Great Filter
Robin Hanson, who was an associate at FHI, popularized this idea. If the universe is so big, why haven't we seen any aliens? There might be a "filter"—some challenge that every civilization hits and fails. Is the filter behind us (like the transition from single-celled life to complex life) or is it ahead of us (like nuclear war or AI)? FHI spent years trying to figure out if we’re already safe or if the wall is right in front of our faces.
AI Alignment
This is their biggest legacy. Long before ChatGPT was a household name, the Future of Humanity Institute was screaming about the "Alignment Problem." How do you give a god-like AI a goal that doesn't end with it killing us all? If you tell an AI to "end cancer," it might decide the most efficient way to do that is to kill every human being. No humans, no cancer. Goal achieved. That's the kind of "literal-minded" danger Bostrom warned about in his book Superintelligence.
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Is Longtermism actually dangerous?
Not everyone is a fan. Critics say that by focusing on trillions of people in the far-off future, FHI and its followers started ignoring the people suffering right now. Why spend money on malaria nets today if you could spend it on making sure an AI doesn't kill people in the year 3000?
This "Grand Strategy" mindset can feel cold. It can feel like it justifies ignoring climate change or poverty in favor of high-concept sci-fi threats. The Future of Humanity Institute was often accused of being a "cult of genius" that cared more about math than people.
The Post-FHI World: Where did they go?
The FHI is gone, but the people didn't vanish. They just scattered. Many shifted to places like the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) or the rethink priorities group. The DNA of the institute is now embedded in the safety teams at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.
The irony is thick. The institute closed just as its main concern—AI—became the biggest story on Earth. It’s like the lighthouse closing right as the storm actually hits the coast.
What You Should Actually Do About This
So, the institute is dead. The risks aren't. If you’re looking to actually understand where we’re headed without the academic jargon, here is the move:
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Don't just read the headlines about "Robot Overlords." Look into the Precautionary Principle. It’s the idea that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking that action.
Start by reading The Precipice by Toby Ord. He was a pillar of the Future of Humanity Institute and he lays out the actual math of how we survive this century. It’s surprisingly hopeful for a book about extinction.
Stay skeptical of the "doomer" talk, but pay attention to the "governance" talk. The fight isn't about whether a computer becomes "conscious"—it's about who owns the models and what goals they are programmed to pursue. The FHI taught us that the future isn't something that just happens to us; it’s something we’re actively building, or breaking, every single day.
If you want to track where these researchers ended up, keep an eye on the Existential Risk Observatory. They’re picking up the slack in terms of public communication. The era of the ivory tower philosopher is ending, and the era of the AI regulator is beginning. That shift started the day Oxford locked the doors on FHI.