Anti-Natalism

There is currently a debate among vloggers on YouTube about the merits of anti-natalism, the position that people should not reproduce due to the suffering inherent to existence. I don't consider myself an anti-natalist, but in way this position kinda makes sense. One of the ethical questions raised by the prospect of artificial intelligence is whether, in the event that we create a machine capable of consciousness, and on top of that capable of emotion, we should give it the capacity for suffering. There's something kinda disturbing about deliberately giving a conscious being the ability to suffer. The only reason you would do such a thing is because you wanted this machine to actually experience that suffering. This seems almost sadistic. Even if you also make it capable of pleasure, and ensure that pleasure makes up the vast majority of its experience, to add in the ability to suffer still seems rather cruel. So when we think we've discovered a way to create a machine that can suffer, some will question whether actually doing so is morally acceptable.

But isn't it odd that we never usually ask this question about creating a child? Why do we not feel that creating a child, which is no less capable of suffering or any less likely to actually suffer, is equally immoral?

The best answer I can come up with is that some of us maybe see it a chance to live our own lives again. It's a chance to redo our childhoods but with the knowledge and advice that we never got. It's become a cliche that parents want their children to have all the advantages that they never had. We all think about things we would have done differently and maybe how much better our lives would be had we only known then what we know now. Being a parent is an opportunity to do exactly that, if only vicariously.