Review of *What We Owe the Future*

Abstract

This article reviews What We Owe the Future, by Will MacAskill, and argues that the book makes a compelling case for longtermism. Longtermism is the idea that the well-being of future generations is of paramount moral importance. The article discusses two key arguments for longtermism: (1) the importance of improving values and institutions to avoid “value lock-in,” or the premature settling on values that might be harmful or incomplete, and (2) the need to reduce the risk of premature human extinction, particularly through existential risks such as global nuclear war, engineered pandemics, and unaligned artificial intelligence. The article also highlights the need for moral circle expansion, arguing that we should take the interests of future generations into account in the same way that we take the interests of current generations and non-human animals into account. While the article acknowledges the difficulty of taking practical action to improve the future, it argues that even small actions can be valuable in the face of great uncertainty. – AI-generated abstract