Suffering risks, known as s-risks for short, are future events with the potential capacity to produce an astronomical amount of

suffering Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, may be an experience of unpleasantness or aversion, possibly associated with the perception of harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of a ...

. These events may generate more suffering than has ever existed on Earth, in the entirety of its existence. Sources of possible s-risks include embodied artificial intelligence and superintelligence, as well as space colonization, which could potentially lead to "constant and catastrophic wars" and an immense increase in wild animal suffering by introducing wild animals, who "generally lead short, miserable lives full of sometimes the most brutal suffering", to other planets, either intentionally, or inadvertently. Steven Umbrello, an AI ethics researcher has warned that biological computing may make system design more prone to s-risks.

References

Existential risk from artificial general intelligence Existential risk from artificial general intelligence is the hypothesis that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in human extinction or some other unrecoverable global catastrophe. It is argued that the hum ...

* Global catastrophic risk *

Suffering-focused ethics Suffering-focused ethics are those positions in ethics that give moral priority to the reduction of suffering. This means that they give greater weight to the reduction of suffering than to the promotion of pleasure, happiness, or to other things t ...

* Wild animal suffering Future problems Philosophy of artificial intelligence Risk Space colonization Suffering Technology hazards Terraforming {{futures-studies-stub

References

Further reading

See also