How many lives does the future hold?

Abstract

Due to its vast temporal and resource-based potential, the number of human-life-equivalents expected to exist in the future is large – on the order of 10^30 lives, or more than a billion billion times the total number of people who have ever lived. The main factor driving this estimate is the possibility of our species enduring for many millions or billions of years, in scenarios where humanity spreads to other planets, star systems, and even other galaxies, and where the vast majority of future humans exist in digital form. This expectation is robust. Even if we are extremely pessimistic about the likelihood of these more expansive scenarios, the expected number of future lives is still likely to be on the order of 10^28, or 10 billion billion billion lives. – AI-generated abstract.