Animal rights in a stelliferous future

 

The YouTube channel metaRising or Waking Cosmos (henceforward WC) is interesting when it explores panpsychism and similar topics, but it also has a “cornucopian” tendency I strongly dislike. Like in the “documentary” above, “Dystopian Futures: Risks of Astronomical Suffering”. 

We are talking “our destiny is in the stars” stuff. WC apparently believes that the human species could one day colonize the entire galaxy and exist for trillions of years! The construction of vast and vastly complex artificial intelligences is part of this colonization program. The whole thing sounds like stale science fiction, presumably because it *is* stale science fiction. None of the speculations featured in “Dystopian Futures” will come true. Indeed, this stelliferous utopianism is arguably a kind of religion for atheist philosophers. 

It seems there is a snake in the garden even in Stellar Cornucopia, however, since WC takes the liberty of discussing various ways in which the galactic conquista can go dangerously wrong and actually increase suffering. The idea that cyborgs can become a new oppressed class or start oppressing us is hardly new. The obsession with animal rights (in a galactic future) is more original, and feels very British. The docu advances a number of concrete proposals to avoid the dangers of causing astronomical suffering. They sound distinctly “globalist” and include the formation of a world government, the appointment of special officials tasked with representing animals or future generations, and “liberal democracy” (which is impossible on a global scale). 

No proposal to simply ban and abolish AI is put forward, presumably because the cyborgs are needed for the space colonization to be feasible at all. WC proposes that we should program the AI to show due consideration for “all sentient beings”. I wonder how *that* would turn out, if AI draws certain conclusions from, say, the fact that humans are an acute threat to the biosphere… 

The idea that humans alive today live in a unique time, during which we can all make a difference for eons to come, sounds crypto-religious. The real dystopian future is the one we are already in. The birth-pangs have begun, and one consequence of resource depletion, the climate crisis and what not, is that AI won´t become as advanced as it (perhaps) could have otherwise. 

Which I suppose is a good thing, in its own kind of way!