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Artūrs's avatar

Thank you for the post! Left me a bit more hopeful. Encouraging/pushing AI labs to consider animals more seems even better tractable than the already successful corporate campaigns. Some lab leaders are already sympathetic, and there is no obvious impact on costs.

Some of my other worries is that the monitoring of needs, while leading to measurable welfare improvements, can sow divisions among animal advocate factions (rights vs welfare). And the desensitization of the general public to farm footage amidst increasing amounts of fake material. It could become harder to achieve that emotional push which motivates many to sign, donate, advocate towards a cause.

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Jamie Woodhouse's avatar

Thanks Lewis. Important closing points: "So perhaps the best thing we can do is to keep influencing those human values in the right direction... The most important thing is that we continue to raise the plight of animals — and seek to expand humanity’s moral circle to cover ever more sentient beings."

You might find the Sentientism worldview and nascent "movement" of interest in that light. In short it's "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings". We need good epistemology and ethics - neither is sufficient. https://sentientism.info/ and https://linktr.ee/sentientism

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