Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

Reasons for Closure

• FHI’s own final report cites increasing incompatibility with Oxford’s Philosophy Faculty: heavy bureaucracy, slow decisions, and misaligned incentives.
• Example given: hundreds of emails needed to route an already-approved small grant through faculty accounts.
• Starting in 2020 the faculty reportedly froze FHI’s fundraising and hiring; in late 2023 they chose not to renew remaining contracts.
• Some commenters speculate reputational issues (founder’s old email, EA/FTX associations, AI “doomerism”) made the institute a PR liability, but dates don’t fully align and funding specifics are unclear.

Oxford, Administration, and Politics

• Several see this as a case of modern university bureaucracy strangling a nimble research group.
• Others push back, suggesting Oxford’s age and stability make “incompetence” less likely and pointing instead to EA‑related money shocks or internal politics.
• FHI’s own report admits underinvestment in university politics and “translation” to local academic culture.

Effective Altruism, FTX, and Longtermism

• Strong disagreement on EA:
  • Critics call it cultish, naive utilitarianism that morphed into longtermist/AI-apocalypse ideology, reallocated money from concrete aid to speculative “infinite future” causes, and helped rationalize FTX fraud.
  • Defenders argue EA began as a sensible attempt to improve charity effectiveness; criminal behavior is on individuals, not the philosophy.
• Some link EA and newer “e/acc” styles of techno-optimism as successive waves of ideology around AI and capitalism.

Bostrom’s 1996 Email and Race/IQ Debate

• The resurfaced email, expressing liking for a statement that Black people are “more stupid” and tying this to IQ literature, sparks a large argument:
  • Some say the full context shows an attempt at blunt, “truth-seeking” speech; they note his later apology and an investigation that did not label him racist.
  • Others say both the original and parts of the apology are straightforwardly racist, scientifically shoddy, and reminiscent of “scientific racism.”
• Extended back-and-forth over:
  • Existence and interpretation of measured group IQ gaps.
  • Environmental vs genetic explanations, statistical bias, and spurious correlations.
  • Whether merely stating certain empirical claims can be called racist, and how “race” is even defined.

Value of FHI and Futurist Research

• Supporters regret the loss of a rare place studying existential risk, AI alignment, and long-run human futures.
• Skeptics dismiss much of the output as speculative “intellectual wankery” or sci‑fi‑like thought experiments with overstated importance.
• Some question whether such institutes are needed now that AI risk ideas and “AI doomerism” have gone mainstream.

Other Threads

• Side debates on:
  • Free markets, monopolies, and concentration of power.
  • Whether pioneers of a technology or external ethicists better understand its risks.
  • Comparisons to other “Future of …” institutes and mixed views on prominent AI futurists.