Thank you for responding to my comment, @Deni555! Your perspective makes a lot of sense: You wish the entire meat industry would end. If you got to choose between a reformed meat industry that treats animals better and no meat industry at all, you'd choose no meat industry at all. Because then there'd be zero farmed animal suffering. And zero suffering is better than some suffering. I get that.
I'm asking a different question than what you should choose if you were omnipotent and got to choose something like that.
I'm writing from a purely consequentialist point of view. I'm trying to analyze the consequences of communicating different messages.
And I'm asking which approach is more likely to result in better consequences for animals: (A) the approach of telling the industry to shut down, or (B) the approach of telling the industry to treat animals better?
Even if you genuinely wish the industry would shut down, saying that out loud probably won't have the affect of shutting the industry down. But it may have the effect of hardening certain people in the industry against the idea of reform.
Perhaps an analogy is abstinence education. A lot of adults wish teens just wouldn't have sex at all. So they tell teens just not to have sex at all. The teens ignore these well-meaning adults, have unprotected sex, spread STDs, and accidentally impregnate one another. Other adults tell teens to choose "safer sex" by using protection like condoms. Teens actually listen to this advice sometimes, use condoms sometimes, and have fewer pregnancies and STDs as a result. Perhaps some of the adults in this second group really wish kids just wouldn't have sex at all because zero sex is the most sure-fire way to eliminate all pregnancy and STD risk, and also because they just plain think teen sex is immoral and gross. But these adults know that saying "I don't want any teens to ever have any sex" won't get these adults their wish. It'll only alienate the teens and cause more pregnancies and STDs.
So the question is: If we want to influence a group of people, should we tell the group of epople to completely stop doing an activity they very much want to do? Or should we tell them to make minor changes to that activity so that the activity will cause less harm? I think we should tell them to make the minor changes to reduce the harm.
This topic matters so much. Most suffering is animal suffering, and that will presumably continue to be true for some period of time. And perhaps soon, most things that happen on Earth will be done by AIs. So it matters a lot how AIs treat animals.
Given all that:
These results are really disappointing and concerning. I had been feeling really optimistic about how AI could improve the future for animals, because I had the impression that AI was generally very animal friendly—especially Claude. It's sad that all AIs you tested will actually just overlook animal welfare when their user overlooks animal welfare. :-(
I really hope that the kind, animal-friendly people who work in Anthropic and other AI labs can work on improving this feature of their models! AIs should take into account morality even when their user fails to.
I agree that veganism is getting in the way of animal advocacy. This post makes great points about how veganism alienates the vast majority of humanity. And to me, veganism's effect on the majority of humanity is actually just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of how veganism harms animals:
To people in the meat, egg, and dairy industries, veganism is worse than alienating. It's a direct threat. To someone who makes their living in animal agriculture, the word "vegan" can sound like an attack. "Vegan" can sound like, "I am boycotting all animal products because I want you, your company, and your entire industry to go out of business. I want you to fail at everything you're trying to achieve and lose your livelihood. I hate you, all your colleagues, and your family. I think you are all fundamentally evil."
That's not a very friendly message to hear. It doesn't open a farmer, farm worker, or ag executive up to want to collaborate with animal advocates. It doesn't open a poultry-industry veterinarian up to want to consider an animal advocate's perspective. Imagine how scary it would feel to hear a message like that. Imagine how little you'd want to network with, collaborate with, or be influenced by, someone who sends you that kind of message.
Meanwhile, the best thing for animals would be maximal collaboration and communication between animal agriculture and animal advocates. Farmers, ag executives, and others in the meat, egg, and dairy industries are the ones who have the most power to influence animals' lives for the better. They are the most important audience for animal advocates to speak with. And they are the most important people for us to learn from. So why should we animal advocates constantly threaten them each time we open our mouths?
This is a really interesting, thoughtful, and empathetic post.
But I had kinda the opposite objection to offsets lol. :-)
I very much applaud people who eat meat and donate to fight farmed animal cruelty. Such people have done, and can do, so much good for animals.
I just worry offsets may focus people on feeling guilty for eating meat. I don't think people need to feel guilty for eating meat. Animal cruelty isn't the fault of the consumer. Consumers want the animals they eat to be treated humanely. Indeed, consumers consistently pay extra for labels that suggest the animal was treated humanely. Animal cruelty is the fault of companies and executives that abuse animals. These companies often intentionally mislead consumers with humanewashing. Consumers should have the right to buy meat and assume the animal was treated humanely. Indeed, the general public has voted for laws against animal abuse! For example, cruelty is a crime in every single US state and, as Charles mentions, the public in many states has even explicitly banned things like battery cages via direct democracy. So whose fault is it when companies commit animal cruelty despite the law? In my mind, it's squarely the company's or its executive's fault—not the fault of the public that voted to outlaw cruelty and then attempted to buy products that the public thought were humane.
And I think that people feeling guilty for eating meat is, ironically, bad for animals. I have heard there is some research to suggest that when people feel guilty toward a group, it actually makes people less empathetic toward that group! It makes sense. If we think, "the other political party is hurting X group of people," we feel bad for X group and want to help them. If we think "my political party is hurting X group of people," our defense mechanisms kick in and we immediately start coming up with reasons why what we're doing to X people really isn't that bad, or is necessary, or is deserved, in order to protect our self image. Then we just try to think about something else, instead of intervening to help X group. It's usually easier to grapple with someone else's misdeeds than our own. So why encourage the public to think of Big Ag's misdeeds as their own?
I suspect that part of the reason the public does so little to improve the plight of animals in factory farms may be because many members of the public wrongly feel like they have no moral standing to complain about the treatment of animals because they already eat meat. This is just what animal abusers want the public to think.
I want to fight back against the idea that anyone who eats meat is part of the problem. I want everyone to feel like we are benevolent heroes who absolutely have moral standing to complain about Big Ag's treatment of animals. I think that's the best way to encourage people to fight back.
To be clear: I agree it is GREAT to help animals through donations!
And I think people should donate joyously and feel good about donating—not just feel like they're doing it to compensate or atone for something.
I also suspect that people who donate joyously may end up giving more than people who are donating to compensate or atone. Because if you enjoy something, you're inspired to do the maximum amount of it! If I feel great whenever I donate money, why would I stop at my "offset" amount? I'd keep giving until it no longer made me feel great (perhaps because it caused a noticeable decrease in my quality of life), which might end up being ten times the offset amount. What I've learned from fundraising is that most people who give a lot of money to charity seem to really enjoy giving money to charity! More broadly, I've noticed people tend to do more of any behavior that they enjoy. So I think we should frame donating as joyful and heroic, not some kind of duty or apology.
Plus, if someone sees their friend happily donating to a pro-animal charity, they may want to mimic their friend and join in on the donating. But if someone sees their friend sadly and shamefully donating out of guilt, I doubt they'll be inspired to mimic their friend and join in.
Lastly, blaming consumers deflects blame from meat companies for the companies' treatment of animals. Consumer-blame rhetoric lets meat companies claim they're only giving in to consumer demand. That's bad for animals. In reality, a single company has way more control over animal welfare than any consumer. A meat company can affect hundreds of millions or billions of animal lives by a decision the company makes on a random day. We should make sure activists, the public, lawmakers, and judges keep our focus on meat companies and work to change the behavior of meat companies, rather than getting distracted by thinking about consumers.
I got this idea from my friend and former colleague who is an environmental activist. She explained to me that the environmental movement used to focus on blaming consumers for buying products and encouraging consumers to recycle. She explained that it wasn't very effective and deflected blame from companies that actually have way more control over the environment than consumers. She said that the more modern trend in the environmental movement is to focus on holding companies accountable for their decisions, and encouraging the public to become activists. That has struck with me for a long time. If the animal movement is going to ask the public to do something, I want us to encourage the public to vote for pro-animal politicians, donate to pro-animal causes, and pressure companies to treat animals better. And I think the best way to get the public to do that is to focus the public on companies' behavior.
So I guess, I would push back on both this very thoughtful and kind post (because I don't think people need to go vegan if they care about animals) and also the very thoughtful and kind idea of offsets (because I don't blame the public for farmed animal cruelty).
To be clear, I applaud anyone who does anything to help animals—people who go vegan to help animals, people who donate to offset their meat eating to help animals, people who set up offsetting campaigns to help animals, and people who make EA Forum posts encouraging others to go vegan to help animals. I just predict that the best outcome for animals will come on focusing more on how much good we can do and less on how much we can blame ourselves.
The good news is that life on Earth has been going better and better for humans over the millennia. For instance, we have technology that make it easy to grow tons and tons of food so lots of people can eat as much as they want. We have cures for lots of previously deadly diseases so lots of us humans can live a very long time. And lots of people live in countries that recognize their rights. We also have a robust international economy that makes it really easy for a large number of people to buy the goods and services they want—and for lots of other people to get paid producing those goods and services!
The bad news is that none of this has translated to things going well for animals. :-( In fact, it has translated to the opposite. Things have been going worse and worse for animals over the millennia. For instance, factory farming, which causes a HUGE amount of suffering for animals, developed very recently in human history, and it developed as a byproduct of humans getting the things they want most (like a great economy, and the ability to produce food cheaply). So we have seen that humans getting more and more of what we want doesn't translate to animals getting what they need. Of course, humans do also want animals to be treated well, on some level! But humans' main goals are human-oriented goals. And so when we get more and more ability to achieve our goals, we put those human-oriented goals first, resulting in negative externalities for animals. If AI goes well for humans, it'll go well for humans. It'll be aligned with what humans want. And that will mean it's aligned with prioritizing human interests over all others. Sure, it'll care about animals a little, the way humans care about animals a little. But it will continue to put human interests first. And that will continue to result in externalities for animals.
The same way people harm animals now (e.g. for food, entertainment, fashion, science, etc.) may continue. And new ways to harm animals may develop that we never could have imagined before AI. For instance, people love having pet dogs. When their pet dogs die, people are sad. People may want to be able to upload their pet dog's brain to the cloud to hang out with the pet dog when their dog dies. But trying to develop this technology may be a lot of work. AI may do the work by uploading 100,000 dog brains, or 100,000 copies of the same dog brain, to the cloud, and running various tests to see what works best. Perhaps a lot of these dogs will suffer immensely due to some mistake AI made in an early draft or some feature AI failed to include. And perhaps the suffering will be made worse because the dogs don't have bodies and cannot even able to express their suffering without vocal cords or paws. Eventually, AI may work out the kinks before AI roles out the final keep-your-dead-pet-alive-as-an-app-on-your-phone product. But there's all that behind-the-scenes suffering in the meantime. Humans care about animals a little. But humans love to turn a blind eye to behind-the-scenes suffering, so humans won't be too upset about this situation. Then maybe AI realizes humans would like an upgrade to their pet-on-your-phone product. And that means AI needs 100,000 more copies of dog brains to do more experiments. AI that is fully aligned with human interests would realize humans would like the upgrade more than humans would be bothered by the suffering inherent in creating the upgrade. So AI will create the upgrade. This is just an example to illustrate my point. But I think there are lots of ways animals can be caused to suffer that we can't even imagine right now.
What animals need is for AI to be aligned with animal interests, too—not just human interests.
We DO have a GiveLively page that explains everything, though! https://secure.givelively.org/donate/legal-impact-for-chickens/membership-drive-match
No, it's me failing to put it on our website!
Thank you for responding to my comment, @Deni555! Your perspective makes a lot of sense: You wish the entire meat industry would end. If you got to choose between a reformed meat industry that treats animals better and no meat industry at all, you'd choose no meat industry at all. Because then there'd be zero farmed animal suffering. And zero suffering is better than some suffering. I get that.
I'm asking a different question than what you should choose if you were omnipotent and got to choose something like that.
I'm writing from a purely consequentialist point of view. I'm trying to analyze the consequences of communicating different messages.
And I'm asking which approach is more likely to result in better consequences for animals: (A) the approach of telling the industry to shut down, or (B) the approach of telling the industry to treat animals better?
Even if you genuinely wish the industry would shut down, saying that out loud probably won't have the affect of shutting the industry down. But it may have the effect of hardening certain people in the industry against the idea of reform.
Perhaps an analogy is abstinence education. A lot of adults wish teens just wouldn't have sex at all. So they tell teens just not to have sex at all. The teens ignore these well-meaning adults, have unprotected sex, spread STDs, and accidentally impregnate one another. Other adults tell teens to choose "safer sex" by using protection like condoms. Teens actually listen to this advice sometimes, use condoms sometimes, and have fewer pregnancies and STDs as a result. Perhaps some of the adults in this second group really wish kids just wouldn't have sex at all because zero sex is the most sure-fire way to eliminate all pregnancy and STD risk, and also because they just plain think teen sex is immoral and gross. But these adults know that saying "I don't want any teens to ever have any sex" won't get these adults their wish. It'll only alienate the teens and cause more pregnancies and STDs.
So the question is: If we want to influence a group of people, should we tell the group of epople to completely stop doing an activity they very much want to do? Or should we tell them to make minor changes to that activity so that the activity will cause less harm? I think we should tell them to make the minor changes to reduce the harm.
These are really good points and I'm sorry for taking so long to respond, @Elif Özdemir!
Ack sorry, that was by me!
Thank you for doing this important research.
This topic matters so much. Most suffering is animal suffering, and that will presumably continue to be true for some period of time. And perhaps soon, most things that happen on Earth will be done by AIs. So it matters a lot how AIs treat animals.
Given all that:
These results are really disappointing and concerning. I had been feeling really optimistic about how AI could improve the future for animals, because I had the impression that AI was generally very animal friendly—especially Claude. It's sad that all AIs you tested will actually just overlook animal welfare when their user overlooks animal welfare. :-(
I really hope that the kind, animal-friendly people who work in Anthropic and other AI labs can work on improving this feature of their models! AIs should take into account morality even when their user fails to.
I agree that veganism is getting in the way of animal advocacy. This post makes great points about how veganism alienates the vast majority of humanity. And to me, veganism's effect on the majority of humanity is actually just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of how veganism harms animals:
To people in the meat, egg, and dairy industries, veganism is worse than alienating. It's a direct threat. To someone who makes their living in animal agriculture, the word "vegan" can sound like an attack. "Vegan" can sound like, "I am boycotting all animal products because I want you, your company, and your entire industry to go out of business. I want you to fail at everything you're trying to achieve and lose your livelihood. I hate you, all your colleagues, and your family. I think you are all fundamentally evil."
That's not a very friendly message to hear. It doesn't open a farmer, farm worker, or ag executive up to want to collaborate with animal advocates. It doesn't open a poultry-industry veterinarian up to want to consider an animal advocate's perspective. Imagine how scary it would feel to hear a message like that. Imagine how little you'd want to network with, collaborate with, or be influenced by, someone who sends you that kind of message.
Meanwhile, the best thing for animals would be maximal collaboration and communication between animal agriculture and animal advocates. Farmers, ag executives, and others in the meat, egg, and dairy industries are the ones who have the most power to influence animals' lives for the better. They are the most important audience for animal advocates to speak with. And they are the most important people for us to learn from. So why should we animal advocates constantly threaten them each time we open our mouths?
Yes this is a good point. I think about this a lot.
This is a really interesting, thoughtful, and empathetic post.
But I had kinda the opposite objection to offsets lol. :-)
I very much applaud people who eat meat and donate to fight farmed animal cruelty. Such people have done, and can do, so much good for animals.
I just worry offsets may focus people on feeling guilty for eating meat. I don't think people need to feel guilty for eating meat. Animal cruelty isn't the fault of the consumer. Consumers want the animals they eat to be treated humanely. Indeed, consumers consistently pay extra for labels that suggest the animal was treated humanely. Animal cruelty is the fault of companies and executives that abuse animals. These companies often intentionally mislead consumers with humanewashing. Consumers should have the right to buy meat and assume the animal was treated humanely. Indeed, the general public has voted for laws against animal abuse! For example, cruelty is a crime in every single US state and, as Charles mentions, the public in many states has even explicitly banned things like battery cages via direct democracy. So whose fault is it when companies commit animal cruelty despite the law? In my mind, it's squarely the company's or its executive's fault—not the fault of the public that voted to outlaw cruelty and then attempted to buy products that the public thought were humane.
And I think that people feeling guilty for eating meat is, ironically, bad for animals. I have heard there is some research to suggest that when people feel guilty toward a group, it actually makes people less empathetic toward that group! It makes sense. If we think, "the other political party is hurting X group of people," we feel bad for X group and want to help them. If we think "my political party is hurting X group of people," our defense mechanisms kick in and we immediately start coming up with reasons why what we're doing to X people really isn't that bad, or is necessary, or is deserved, in order to protect our self image. Then we just try to think about something else, instead of intervening to help X group. It's usually easier to grapple with someone else's misdeeds than our own. So why encourage the public to think of Big Ag's misdeeds as their own?
I suspect that part of the reason the public does so little to improve the plight of animals in factory farms may be because many members of the public wrongly feel like they have no moral standing to complain about the treatment of animals because they already eat meat. This is just what animal abusers want the public to think.
I want to fight back against the idea that anyone who eats meat is part of the problem. I want everyone to feel like we are benevolent heroes who absolutely have moral standing to complain about Big Ag's treatment of animals. I think that's the best way to encourage people to fight back.
To be clear: I agree it is GREAT to help animals through donations!
And I think people should donate joyously and feel good about donating—not just feel like they're doing it to compensate or atone for something.
I also suspect that people who donate joyously may end up giving more than people who are donating to compensate or atone. Because if you enjoy something, you're inspired to do the maximum amount of it! If I feel great whenever I donate money, why would I stop at my "offset" amount? I'd keep giving until it no longer made me feel great (perhaps because it caused a noticeable decrease in my quality of life), which might end up being ten times the offset amount. What I've learned from fundraising is that most people who give a lot of money to charity seem to really enjoy giving money to charity! More broadly, I've noticed people tend to do more of any behavior that they enjoy. So I think we should frame donating as joyful and heroic, not some kind of duty or apology.
Plus, if someone sees their friend happily donating to a pro-animal charity, they may want to mimic their friend and join in on the donating. But if someone sees their friend sadly and shamefully donating out of guilt, I doubt they'll be inspired to mimic their friend and join in.
Lastly, blaming consumers deflects blame from meat companies for the companies' treatment of animals. Consumer-blame rhetoric lets meat companies claim they're only giving in to consumer demand. That's bad for animals. In reality, a single company has way more control over animal welfare than any consumer. A meat company can affect hundreds of millions or billions of animal lives by a decision the company makes on a random day. We should make sure activists, the public, lawmakers, and judges keep our focus on meat companies and work to change the behavior of meat companies, rather than getting distracted by thinking about consumers.
I got this idea from my friend and former colleague who is an environmental activist. She explained to me that the environmental movement used to focus on blaming consumers for buying products and encouraging consumers to recycle. She explained that it wasn't very effective and deflected blame from companies that actually have way more control over the environment than consumers. She said that the more modern trend in the environmental movement is to focus on holding companies accountable for their decisions, and encouraging the public to become activists. That has struck with me for a long time. If the animal movement is going to ask the public to do something, I want us to encourage the public to vote for pro-animal politicians, donate to pro-animal causes, and pressure companies to treat animals better. And I think the best way to get the public to do that is to focus the public on companies' behavior.
So I guess, I would push back on both this very thoughtful and kind post (because I don't think people need to go vegan if they care about animals) and also the very thoughtful and kind idea of offsets (because I don't blame the public for farmed animal cruelty).
To be clear, I applaud anyone who does anything to help animals—people who go vegan to help animals, people who donate to offset their meat eating to help animals, people who set up offsetting campaigns to help animals, and people who make EA Forum posts encouraging others to go vegan to help animals. I just predict that the best outcome for animals will come on focusing more on how much good we can do and less on how much we can blame ourselves.
Interested in others' thoughts on my perspective!
The good news is that life on Earth has been going better and better for humans over the millennia. For instance, we have technology that make it easy to grow tons and tons of food so lots of people can eat as much as they want. We have cures for lots of previously deadly diseases so lots of us humans can live a very long time. And lots of people live in countries that recognize their rights. We also have a robust international economy that makes it really easy for a large number of people to buy the goods and services they want—and for lots of other people to get paid producing those goods and services!
The bad news is that none of this has translated to things going well for animals. :-( In fact, it has translated to the opposite. Things have been going worse and worse for animals over the millennia. For instance, factory farming, which causes a HUGE amount of suffering for animals, developed very recently in human history, and it developed as a byproduct of humans getting the things they want most (like a great economy, and the ability to produce food cheaply). So we have seen that humans getting more and more of what we want doesn't translate to animals getting what they need. Of course, humans do also want animals to be treated well, on some level! But humans' main goals are human-oriented goals. And so when we get more and more ability to achieve our goals, we put those human-oriented goals first, resulting in negative externalities for animals. If AI goes well for humans, it'll go well for humans. It'll be aligned with what humans want. And that will mean it's aligned with prioritizing human interests over all others. Sure, it'll care about animals a little, the way humans care about animals a little. But it will continue to put human interests first. And that will continue to result in externalities for animals.
The same way people harm animals now (e.g. for food, entertainment, fashion, science, etc.) may continue. And new ways to harm animals may develop that we never could have imagined before AI. For instance, people love having pet dogs. When their pet dogs die, people are sad. People may want to be able to upload their pet dog's brain to the cloud to hang out with the pet dog when their dog dies. But trying to develop this technology may be a lot of work. AI may do the work by uploading 100,000 dog brains, or 100,000 copies of the same dog brain, to the cloud, and running various tests to see what works best. Perhaps a lot of these dogs will suffer immensely due to some mistake AI made in an early draft or some feature AI failed to include. And perhaps the suffering will be made worse because the dogs don't have bodies and cannot even able to express their suffering without vocal cords or paws. Eventually, AI may work out the kinks before AI roles out the final keep-your-dead-pet-alive-as-an-app-on-your-phone product. But there's all that behind-the-scenes suffering in the meantime. Humans care about animals a little. But humans love to turn a blind eye to behind-the-scenes suffering, so humans won't be too upset about this situation. Then maybe AI realizes humans would like an upgrade to their pet-on-your-phone product. And that means AI needs 100,000 more copies of dog brains to do more experiments. AI that is fully aligned with human interests would realize humans would like the upgrade more than humans would be bothered by the suffering inherent in creating the upgrade. So AI will create the upgrade. This is just an example to illustrate my point. But I think there are lots of ways animals can be caused to suffer that we can't even imagine right now.
What animals need is for AI to be aligned with animal interests, too—not just human interests.