Theory: Lumon is a transhumanist organization trying to end human suffering

Some season 2 spoilers

I think the master plan is to develop a device/ new species of human that is impervious to traumatic/negative experiences.

All the “life experience” data that is extracted within the severance procedure is what the data refiners are ultimately refining. They aren't refining other people they are refining themselves.

When the life experience data is stripped from the innie, that data exists without phenomenological experience/emotion attached to it, it is simply code. The emotions affiliated with negative experience still exist within the innie, hence all the quotes about mark’s innie still carrying the sadness of Gemmas death with him without knowing where the sadness is from. The scary numbers are encoded traumatic events, and by sorting them into the respective bins they are attaching the phenomenonalogical experience to the code and giving lumon the data they need to improve their severance procedure/achieve their ultimate goal. The missing link in achieving that goal is solving for which memories/life-events are associated with negative emotions.

The ultimate goal is to create a device that automatically allows outies to not experience negative events. The limitation of the current severance procedure is that you can only manually avoid negative experience. You can only avoid expected tragedy. So, you can avoid giving birth, you can avoid your work day but still, what you can't avoid is unexpected tragedy.

This is why Mark is key.

The source of his sadness was sudden and unexpected, when he finishes cold harbor they will have the information they need to create a device that automatically prevents humans from negative experiences. The device will detect a sudden negative event and automatically allow you not to experience it spontaneously. Lumon is, in their eyes, on the brink of achieving ultimate goal of the transhumanist movement: to end human suffering.

The finished product could end up being clones with this technology hard-wired into them. A new human species that doesn't experience suffering. The clones we witness in the outdoor excursion episode are the unfinished products. It is only after mark has completed cold harbor that the clones will be exported.