“In addition to reducing suffering in the short run, we should consider how our actions will affect the future, including the far future. We appear poised at a crucial period in history, where the trajectories of our technology and society may make a lasting impact on intelligence in our region of the universe for billions of years. It looks likely that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be developed in the coming decades or centuries, and its initial conditions and control structures may make an enormous impact to the dynamics, values, and character of life in the cosmos. Colonization of space seems likely to increase suffering by creating (literally) astronomically more minds than exist on Earth, so we should push for policies that would make a colonization wave more humane, such as not propagating wild-animal suffering to other planets or in virtual worlds.”

— Brian Tomasik, Risks of Astronomical Future Suffering