![]() Scenarios in which machines supplant biological life may sound preposterous, perhaps because they are common tropes in science fiction. These and other considerations are outlined by Kaj Sotala’s “ Advantages of Artificial Intelligences, Uploads, and Digital Minds“. Software code is transparent and so is easier to modify. Memories and cognition modules can be more easily imported and distributed. Digital agents can also be copied quickly, without requiring long development times. While human brains currently have more total processing power than even the fastest supercomputers, machines are predicted to catch up in processing power within a few decades. Neurons can fire at most 200 times per second, compared with about 2 billion times per second for modern microprocessors. Biological neurons transmit signals at 1 to 120 meters per second, whereas electronic signals travel at 300 million meters per second (the speed of light). Machines are easier to shield from radiation, don’t need exercise to prevent muscle atrophy, and can generally be made more hardy than biological astronauts.īut in the long run, it won’t be just in space where machines will have the advantage. Computers need power, but this is easier to generate in electrical form than by creating a supply of human-digestible foods that contain a variety of nutrients. Robots are hard to build, but they can go places like Mars where it would be more expensive and more risky to send humans. Advantages of digital mindsĮven today we see machines replacing humans in the field of space exploration. The apparent advent of greater machine intelligence casts this assumption into doubt. However, terraforming scenarios assume that biological life will remain in control of humanity’s future. Terraforming many planets would multiply animal suffering manyfold over what we see today. While this would take thousands to hundreds of thousands of years if it’s feasible at all, the end result would be a significant increase in the amount of wild-animal suffering. They may attempt “terraforming” - making other planets more Earth-like in their conditions so that they can support plant and then animal life. On longer timescales, humans may begin populating other planets, perhaps starting with Mars. At the moment, environmentalism is more prevalent. Tendencies for both animal welfare and environmentalism increase with education and GDP per capita, so it’s not obvious which meme will win out. ![]() With luck, people will show increasing concern for the suffering of wild animals due to natural causes like predation and disease, although this impulse may be counteracted by increasing reverence for pristine wilderness and ecosystem integrity.Society may shift away from cows and pigs as the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe, although this might actually increase total animal suffering if consumers substitute toward poultry, fish, and perhaps insects - which need to be farmed in greater numbers to produce the same yield. ![]()
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