Most of us don't think of power-hungry killer robots as an imminent threat to humanity, especially when poverty and the climate crisis are already ravaging the Earth. This wasn't the case for Sam Bankman-Fried and his followers, powerful actors who have embraced a school of thought within the effective altruism movement called "longtermism". In February, the Future Fund, a philanthropic organization endowed by the now-disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur, announced that it would be disbursing more than $100m – and possibly up to $1bn – this year on projects to "improve humanity's long-term prospects". The slightly cryptic reference might have been a bit puzzling to those who think of philanthropy as funding homelessness charities and medical NGOs in the developing world. In fact, the Future Fund's particular areas of interest include artificial intelligence, biological weapons and "space governance", a mysterious term referring to settling humans in space as a potential "watershed moment in human history".

There's a certain oversized quality to a Las Vegas conference center that makes you feel like a child monarch: simultaneously powerful and helpless. Presumably, the rooms and corridors are cavernous because space is cheap in the desert, but the overall effect somehow manages to be stifling. It feels suspiciously big, as if you're never meant to leave. The trappings of a conference do nothing to dispel this feeling: everything is arranged -- your room, your food, your schedule -- and hey, look! They even have robots handing out snacks!

The pace of innovation is incredibly fast with new things being discovered daily. This is a special type of intelligence that is exhibited by computers and other machines. It's a flexible agent that perceives its environment and takes the necessary action required for the success of that particular phenomenon. Artificial intelligence is used when machines copy the cognitive functions of the human brain in learning and solving problems. As machines become increasingly capable, other facilities are removed from the definition.

Eric Ward is the co-founder and CEO of both Odyne Space and Aten Engineering, two space tech startups with a ton of promise for the future. Eric is an experienced systems architect who sees growing the space industry as the next step to progressing humanity beyond the planet. At Odyne, Eric and the team are working on phase one: launch, and run a large scale nano and micro satellite launch program to allow more satellite tech companies easier access to space. Aten Engineering on the other hand deals with what to do once we get there and is an asteroid mining company to provide humanity with inexpensive access to the materials we need to become a space-faring civilization. Eric recently received a Master's degree in Systems Design and Management from MIT, has published multiple technical documents on Systems Architecture and the Space Industry, has been featured in Fast Company, and co-founded the MIT New Space Age Conference.