India produced 239 million tonnes of milk in 2023-24
It has 300 million dairy cows and buffaloes - the largest herd on the planet
It contributes 25% of global milk supply
The market is projected to nearly double in size by 2032
By any economic measure, this is a success story. It supports 80 million farmers, anchors rural livelihoods, and feeds a population of 1.4 billion.
Actual Numbers
As Discussed above, India has 300 million dairy cows and buffaloes. Most of them live in small family farms. But their condition is not right.
Study Published in 2020 observed 38 Dairy farms in Kerala and found something different.
100% of cows were tied through a hole pierced in their nose
On 50% of farms, animals were tied indoors for the entire day
Only 22% of farms gave animals free access to water at all times
Food access was restricted to an average of 4.3 hours per day
Access to clean water is one of freedoms for Animal welfare, Most basic. But majority of the farms have failed it.
Talking about regulation - The 2014 National Dairy Code of Practice was introduced with minimum welfare standards. Eleven years later, enforcement is still near zero.
What a Dairy Cow's Life Actually Looks Like
Cow only produced milk after giving birth. that is the simple biology.
To get milk, farmers artificially inseminate her roughly once a year.
80% of the cattle in India are bred in this way.
usually this procedure is done by untrained workers using unsterile equipments, leads to infection.
When a calf is born, within one of two days, the calf is taken away.
To keep producing milk after the calf is gone - Many farmers inject oxytocine.
Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm?
We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months:
* 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched...
TLDR: Everyone’s talking about what the money could do, but few about how to decide where it goes.
This post is part of the new series of articles on cross-cause giving and the new wave of philanthropy. Stay tuned to the EA Forum and our Substack for the latest takes on topics such as giving now vs. later, common pitfalls in cause prioritization, and other crucial considerations from the Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) team...
Summary:
First, I give several different angles on how I feel about reinforcement learning:
* Theoretical case: RL is a black-box source of agency — this should give us classic misalignment worries, especially compared to agency-via-scaffolding
* Recent incidents (huggingface etc) and more mundane forms of misaligned behaviour in personal use give me bad vibes about the direction-of-travel of recent AI progress
* I’m worried things might get worse:...
