The apparent absence of alien life in our universe has been a source of speculation and controversy in scientific circles for decades. If we assume that there’s even a tiny chance that intelligent life might evolve on a given planet, it seems almost impossible to imagine that the cosmos isn’t brimming with alien civilizations. So where are they?

That’s what Anders Sandberg calls the “Fermi Question”: given the unfathomable size of the universe, how come we have seen no signs of alien life? Anders is a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, where he tries to anticipate the ethical, philosophical and practical questions that human beings are going to have to face as we approach what could be a technologically unbounded future. That work focuses to a great extent on superintelligent AI and the existential risks it might create. As part of that work, he’s studied the Fermi Question in great detail, and what it implies for the scarcity of life and the value of the human species.