For years I was a professor at Oxford, with its great Bodleian Library. However, only library staff are allowed in the Bodleian stacks, and I have never seen them. Now I am at Harvard, with its equally great Widener Library, and here, students and faculty and even their guests can use the stacks. They are magnificent!

And entirely empty of life. I just went in, down three flights, through the Pusey tunnel, to Row 66 of Level P3, past ten thousand beautiful books and no people. Right now I am sitting in the Widener reading room, which is as grand as the Titanic, and there are 11 other readers here.

I wanted to look up Ockham’s Razor in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but the student at the counter said that if I really needed the hardcopy, I would have to request it from remote storage. This seemed preposterous, and as it happened, she was wrong. I walked up to the reading room and the first thing I saw was the Encyclopedia itself, filling the first two shelves on the left. The other 91 shelves are empty.

Hardcopy books are ceasing to matter for scholarship, and it is hard to imagine that Widener will still be running in its current form twenty or maybe even five years from now. This should be thrilling, for it reflects how information is becoming universally accessible online. There is every reason to be happy as Widener and the Bodleian fade out; but I am deeply sad.

[26 November 2025]

People talk about what the goals of a powerful AI might be, for we all worry, might AI dominate or replace us? In such discussions, many reassure us that there’s no telling what an AI’s goals might be. Perhaps it will have other interests than conquest.

You rarely hear mentioned what should be the starting consideration. Since Darwin, we have known that the reason life expands to fill niches across the planet is nothing more than natural selection: life forms that don’t expand are supplanted by those that do. Bacteria do it, plants do it, yet these creatures have no goals. If you think the same principle doesn’t apply to AI, you need to give an argument.

[26 November 2025]