Applications are currently being accepted for the Futurekind Fall Fellowship 2026/27 (dated tentatively from Nov 15, 2026 to Feb 15, 2027), a free, 12-week, remote programme that looks at the intersection of AI and animal advocacy. After two previous groups which gathered more than 280 fellows from 57 countries, this one is introducing a key operational focus: sourcing active problem statements directly from frontline animal welfare NGOs and advocacy groups in order to convert ongoing field difficulties into practical AI tools, policy guidelines, and open research. The applications deadline is 15 October 2026. We are also seeking to recruit paid facilitators and mentors.
👉 Apply as a Fellow | 👉 Apply as a Paid Facilitator / Mentor
Artificial intelligence will have a major impact on the future of animal lives, since the expansion of automated factory farming is reflected in public knowledge ecosystems in terms of animal sentience and welfare. Nevertheless, surprisingly few projects put in place the necessary capacity for talent, builders, and researchers to use AI specifically for the purpose of protecting animals rather than for optimizing systems that take advantage of them.
The Futurekind Fellowship, which is hosted by Electric Sheep and was incubated by Kickstarting for Good in 2024, addresses this gap by providing advocates, researchers and technologists with the knowledge, mentorship and global network necessary for them to develop high-impact interventions at the frontier of AI and animal protection.
Since the last group we had, Electric Sheep has set up a physical base in Bangalore, India, where it organises hackathons, animal rights coding camps and co-working weeks. The best projects from the fellowship are given direct access to our Incubator programme, which provides promising ideas with seed mentoring and resources.
In the earlier cohorts the fellows came up with their own project ideas but for the Fall 2026/27 cohort we are increasing the direct impact in the field by obtaining from frontline animal advocacy NGOs and policy groups actual problem briefs which are still unresolved.
For the duration of the four-week project sprint the fellows will work in teams that are supervised by mentors in order to deal with these real organizational challenges and will produce practical results such as open-source advocacy tools, datasets, policy memos, or AI workflow automations which NGOs can put into immediate use.
The fellowship is completely online. There is no cost to join:
1. Immersion Block (Weeks 1–6)
2. Specialization Track (Weeks 7–8)
3. Project Sprint (Weeks 9–12)
Fellows move from learning to doing. With help from mentors teams work on real problems from NGOs to create useful tools, research or strategies. Strong results might be invited into the Futurekind Incubator for work.
Track Record & Past Cohort Outcomes across our previous iterations:
An open-source search tool using a protein language model to find plant-based functional analogs for animal proteins in a 3.3-million-protein database.
A pilot benchmark investigating how large language models communicate animal welfare concepts across English, Hindi, and Punjabi.
No coding experience or formal training in animal activism is needed. We want people who're curious who strongly believe in high-impact work and who want to find solutions to problems.
We especially welcome applications from:
People who work in technology, coding or data science and want to use their skills for animal protection
Researchers, policy experts and students who care about AI safety and animal ethics
Candidates, from the Global Majority, whose views are important but not often heard in technology and governance conversations
We are also hiring up to 15 paid facilitators and recruiting project mentors:
The era of AI offers possibilities. Each day new chances show up in fields like preventing disease sharing knowledge enjoying leisure, finding pleasure and seeking purpose.. The risk of misusing AI is also big. It threatens marginalized groups, our planet and its ecosystems and the suffering of both human and animal lives.
Electric Sheep focuses on raising awareness about these hidden dangers and on helping people bright young minds and those from the global majority take charge and build solutions. We are a movement that works on creating and studying AI that helps the most vulnerable and stands up for the causes we care about. Our vision is to build a world where safe and caring AI improves the wellbeing of all beings on our planet in its ecosystems and in its communities well as human and animal life.
We reach this goal by learning, working together and building people like you to develop projects that matter. We guide you from an idea to impact and from a project to a pitch for investment. By taking part in one of our courses, hackathons or accelerators you will become part of a community of entrepreneurs AI builders, researchers and changemakers. Thousands of Electric Sheep members across the globe form a movement devoted to AI for good.
If you are a coder looking for a challenge a researcher working to make AI safer for ecosystems and species an NGO or government worker eager to explore AI’s possibilities or just someone curious, about AI who wants to keep it positive we will give you tools, knowledge, partners, coaching, help and investment to build a better AI future for everyone.
If you want to shape the future of AI and animal protection and turn your ideas into impact we would love to hear from you.
Apply for the Futurekind Fellowship
Apply to Facilitate or Mentor
Learn more:Â electricsheep.is
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out directly to [email protected]Â
