Suffering risks



Suffering risks, or s-risks, are risks involving an astronomical amount of suffering; much more than all of the suffering that has occurred on Earth thus far. They are sometimes categorized as a subclass of existential risks.

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.

Induced amnesia has been proposed as a way to mitigate s-risks in locked-in conscious AI and certain AI-adjacent biological systems like brain organoids.