Episode Details
Back to Episodes“AI and animal welfare: am I missing something?” by SiobhanBall
Description
Animal welfare is what brought me to EA. I spent several years working for animal advocacy organisations, and the EA ideals to do with rigorous thinking about where effort makes the biggest difference was something I believed in fully.
This post is me thinking aloud, not staking a firm position. I'd genuinely welcome pushback from people who know this space better than I do.
The framing of the problem is a bit odd to me
The AI x animals argument, as I understand it: AI systems are making decisions that affect how we use animals. Those systems don't adequately represent animal welfare. If we can get welfare into the benchmarks/constitutions of AI labs, we can shift outcomes for animals at huge scale before they get locked in. Okay.
But nobody is 'ignoring' animal welfare; they're just indifferent. AI systems are being built to do exactly what they were designed to do, which is to faithfully execute human preferences. And those are, in aggregate, to eat cheap meat, conduct research on living organisms when it's convenient, and prioritise cost and efficiency in agricultural supply chains. AI is reflecting the values of the humans. I don't think [...]
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First published:
April 25th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.