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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:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Recent opportunities to take action
This paper shows how strategic menu manipulation in a university canteen achieved a 30.7% reduction in carbon footprint without anyone noticing the nudge. It's such a simple idea that could be implemented in universities, schools, hospital and prison cafeterias etc. It seems harmless and the gains seem disproportionately large when we look at the relative simplicity of carrying this out. The impact could be substantial for animal welfare (cutting down on the consumption of animal-based foods) and climate change.
I don't know what would be needed to get measures like this to be implemented more widely, but it seems promising.