by Nick Bostrom
Bostrom warns that once artificial intelligence surpasses human cognition, controlling it becomes nearly impossible. The real danger isn't malice but misaligned goals pursued with superhuman competence.
In this collection, Superintelligence references 1 other book and is cited by 7 other books.
It draws on Thinking, Fast and Slow.
It’s picked up by Life 3.0, Enlightenment Now and The Precipice and 4 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
Superintelligence has become the central reference point in the AI safety conversation, with virtually every serious book on AI risk engageing with Bostrom's arguments. Stuart Russell positions his Human Compatible framework as a direct response to Bostrom's control problem, Brian Christian frames The Alignment Problem as an investigation into the present-day version of Bostrom's theoretical concerns, and Toby Ord draws on Bostrom throughout The Precipice's AI-risk chapter.
Not everyone agrees with the conclusions -- Steven Pinker rejects what he calls the most extreme doom scenarios in Enlightenment Now, and Kai-Fu Lee argues the more immediate threat is narrow AI displacing workers, not superintelligent takeover. Readers find it dense and philosophically rigorous, making it essential but demanding reading for anyone thinking about where AI is headed.
The books Bostrom references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Bostrom references Kahneman on cognitive biases and AI.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “Superintelligence” and what they take from it.
Tegmark directly engages with Bostrom's superintelligence scenarios, including the famous paperclip maximiser thought experiment. He builds on Bostrom's concerns while offering a more optimistic framework for AI alignment.
Pinker engages Bostrom's Superintelligence in his existential-risk chapter, rejecting what he calls the most extreme AI doom scenarios while acknowledging Bostrom's concerns merit serious analysis.
Ord draws on Bostrom's Superintelligence throughout the AI-risk chapter, adopting Bostrom's definitions of existential catastrophe and his framework for misaligned optimization, and names Bostrom as a key colleague at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute.
Discusses Bostrom's existential-risk framing from Superintelligence but argues the more immediate threat is not superintelligent AI but narrow AI displacing workers at scale within one generation
Christian frames his book as an investigation into the practical, present-day manifestation of the alignment concerns Bostrom raised theoretically in Superintelligence, showing how misalignment already plagues deployed ML systems
Russell positions his provably beneficial AI framework as a direct response to the control problem Bostrom formalized in Superintelligence, arguing that preference uncertainty provides a more tractable solution than Bostrom's proposed containment strategies
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Directly cites
Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Tools of Titans
Tim Ferriss
Grit
Angela Duckworth
Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
Life 3.0
Max Tegmark
4 shared citations
Homo Deus
Yuval Noah Harari
3 shared citationsThinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
3 shared citationsSapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
2 shared citations
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff
2 shared citationsThe Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker
2 shared citationsThis book and its direct connections. Hover a node to see its title, click to visit.
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