Episode Details
Back to Episodes“What would an animal-aligned AI be aligned to?” by Aidan Kankyoku, Anima International
Description
This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
- Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare, and to altruistic values generally; and
- Offer a partial solution to that question—one I am not very confident in—so it can be critiqued.
Summary of important claims/arguments:
- When we talk about aligning AI to animal welfare (or welfare of digital minds, or even human welfare) different ideas may come to mind, such as “not speciesist” or “wants to end factory farming.” These ideas can be arranged on a spectrum from broad values to specific actions or ways the world should be changed.
- Most people thinking about animal welfare alignment agree that we should try to constrain future superintelligent AIs to broad values while deferring to them on more specific actions. But it is not clear where to draw the line between these two.
- Current alignment techniques further complicate this by compressing and distorting the lessons we try to teach AIs. [...]
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Outline:
(01:56) Alignment to what?
(04:20) Does intelligence lead to better moral conclusions?
(06:53) Which questions should we defer to superintelligent AI?
(10:11) Current alignment strategies are imprecise
(12:53) Where does that leave animal welfare alignment?
(13:48) Strategy #1: Train & evaluate a broad distribution of practical decisions
(18:39) Strategy #2: Urgently research unresolved foundational questions
(19:49) Minimum viable values for animal welfare alignment
(20:53) Summary of recommendations
The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
June 30th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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