Bostrom is a crypto-creationist "philosopher" with farcical arguments in favor of abrahamic mythology and neo-luddism. People are giving too much credit to lunatics who promote AI eschatology. Please do not listen to schizophrenics like Bostrom. The whole "academic career" of Bostrom may be summarized as "non-solutions to non-problems". I have never seen a less useful thinker. He could not be more wrong! I sometimes think that philosophy departments should be shut down, if they are to breed this kind of ignorance.
It's quite ironic that Bostrom is talking about superintelligence, BTW. How will he imagine what intelligent entities think?
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are
I realize this might go into a post in a media thread, rather than its own topic, but it seems big enough, and likely-to-prompt-discussion enough, to have its own thread.
I liked the talk, although it was less polished than TED talks often are. What was missing I think was any indication of how to solve the problem. He could be seen as just an ivory tower philosopher speculating on something that might be a problem one day, because apart from mentioning in the beginning that he works with mathematicians and IT guys, he really does not give an impression that this problem is already being actively worked on.