Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence Soon?

Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence Could Be a Year Away—or Not

Back in 2012, when I first chatted with Nick Bostrom about AI risk, the topic was a niche blip—dung beetle mating habits had more academic ink. Fast forward to 2025, post his 2014 game-changer ‘Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies’, and AI’s sprinting ahead. So, how close are we to transformative AI or superintelligence? Bostrom’s answer in our latest interview is a jolt: “We are now in a position where we can’t be confident it couldn’t happen within a very short timeframe—like a year or two.”

That’s not a prediction—it’s a wake-up call. He muses that a single breakthrough, a eureka moment in some lab, could flip the switch. Maybe we’ve all been missing one trick with today’s models, and fixing it unleashes the floodgates. More likely, he adds, it’ll take a bit longer. But the kicker? We can’t rule out a sudden leap. In a world where AI’s pace keeps us guessing, Bostrom’s saying: don’t blink—you might miss it.

Transcript

Adam Ford: “How far away do you think we are from transformative AI, or superintelligence?”

Nick Bostrom: Well, progress has been rapid. think we are now in a position where we can’t be confident that it couldn’t happen within some very short timeframe, like a year or two. I it could sort of happen at any time. Like if somebody in some lab gets just some key insight that makes a big unlock. Like if it turns out that all these current big models and reasoning models we’re training, if there’s like one thing we’ve all been doing wrong, and somebody figures out that, maybe that would be enough. I think more likely it will take a bit longer, but yeah, we can’t be confident that there

We are now in a position where we can’t be confident it couldn’t happen within a very short timeframe—like a year or two.

Nick Bostrom, in interview with Adam Ford, 2025