I'm worried that animal welfare advocates might neglect the importance of AI in determining what happens to animals. More specifically, I'm worried that the value
- {animal welfare matters}
and the true-according-to-me belief
- {AI is going to transform and determine most of what happens on Earth}
... don't exist in same person often enough, such that opportunities to steer AI technology toward applications that care for animals could go under-served.
Of course, we could hope that AI alignment solutions, if effective in protecting human wellbeing, would likely serve animals as well. But I'm not so sure, and I'd like to see more efforts to change the memetic landscape among present-day humans to better recognize the sentience and moral importance of of animal life, especially wild animals that we might not by default think of humanity as "responsible for". The only concrete example I know of is the following, which seems to have had little support from or connection to EA:
- https://www.projectceti.org/ - a project using ML to translate the language of sperm whale in their natural habitat. As far as I know, they are not fully funded, could probably use support from EAs, and I think the work they're doing is in-principle feasible from a technical perspective.
Ideally, I'd like to see a lot more support for projects like the above, which increase AI <> animal welfare bandwidth over the next 3-5 years, before more break-neck progress in AI makes it even harder to influence people and steer where technology and its applications are going.
So! If you care about animals, and are starting to get more interested in importance of AI, please consider joining or supporting or starting projects that steer AI progress toward caring more about animals. I'm sad to say my day job is not addressing this problem nearly as well or as quickly as I'd like (although we will somewhat), so I wanted to issue a bit of a cry for help — or at least, a cry for "someone should do something here".
Whatever you decide, good luck, and thanks for reading!
It is a minor point But I would like to pushback on some misconceptions involving “panda conservation”, mostly by paraphrasing the relevant chapter from Lucy Cookes The Truth About Animals.
Contrary to headlines about libidoless pandas driving themselves extinct, the main reason pandas are going extinct is the main reason animal species in general are going extinct, habitat loss as humans take and fracture There land.
Giant Pandas almost entirely rely on bamboo for food , bamboo engages in synchronous flowering with the other bamboo plants in the area and then Seeds and dies off, because of this it is important that the pandas have a wide range of space they can travel across not only to mate with other pandas, but to access new bamboo forests when The ones they live in die.
These forests even in “ protected” areas, are threatened by mining, roads, and agriculture.
Meanwhile , giant pandas become an international symbol of China, China sends pandas to its allies as gifts, or loans them to foreign zoos at a million dollars per year( these rules also applying to any offspring born in the foreign countries), and panda cubs draw in domestic tourism, and large numbers are bred of an animal that doesn’t breed well in captivity, to release 10 socially maladjusted giant pandas 8 of which don’t survive.
Pandas aren’t hogging conservation dollars because 1)the money isn’t /conservation money/ that would go to other species, It’s politics and business 2)The benefits that would protect wild pandas, ( protecting large intact tracts of land) would also help a wide array of wildlife, this is a general trend of megafauna, they need more space and are disproportionately impacted by habitat loss, which is the leading cause of species extinction, and they are charismatic, functioning as umbrella species that protect whole ecosystems.
3) The most effective ways to save panda populations aren’t being acted upon in the first place
Side-note: I do think pandas are an obvious place to start when it comes to genetically modifying wildlife, considering they are a Charismatic Megafaunal Herbivore, that normally has twins , but always abandons one offspring in the wild( because bamboo is too low calorie compared to what it’s omnivore ancestors ate to feed both twins) modifying them to only produce one offspring at a time feels like a no-brainer assuming we can get There numbers up still.