Other than argue about it, probably not much, assuming functionalism and materialism/physicalism of some kind that's compatible with artificial sentience.

You may be interested in the article A science of chimeras? The implications of illusionism for non-human consciousness research. The abstract is below.

Illusionism states that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. While illusionism is controversial, it is a serious contender among theories of consciousness. We argue that it has substantial and non-trivial implications for non-human consciousness research (NHCR), particularly for the study of the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across beings. If illusionism is true, NHCR can be pursued if conceptualized as investigating the distribution of quasi-phenomenal consciousness, i.e. the states which are misrepresented as phenomenally conscious in humans. However, we argue that knowing the distribution of quasi-phenomenal consciousness is not highly informative. For this reason, illusionism suggests that some approaches to NHCR should be preferred over others. Approaches which focus on features that provide valuable information about non-human cognition independently of their supposed relation to consciousness retain much of their value if illusionism is true. We propose a “zombie test” and five specific heuristics to help identifying such features. Consequently, empirical researchers who take illusionism seriously gain a reason to prioritize some methodological approaches over others.

Hi Simon. In that case, how do you explain that impact-focussed grantmakers support many interventions, even within a single area (see, for example, the Animal Welfare Fund)? If the cost-effectiveness of each did not meaningfully decrease with spending, one would expect them to focus on much fewer grants?

Hi Ollie. I can no longer remove tags in my draft or published posts.

I remain sceptical of computational functionalism (CF). It implies some sets of AND, OR, and NOT operations lead to consciousness even if run at the rate of one operation every billion years, which seems very implausible to me.

Thanks, Jan. Yes, I was looking into an older version of the form.

Here is a post elaborating on why I think expanding agricultural land may increase or decrease the welfare/suffering/happiness of soil invertebrates.

No worries. Thanks for fixing it. The text looks good now.

Thanks for the relevant nuance, @GV 🔸. The 2026 multiplier would ideally account for the donations of pledges made after 2026 as a result of work in 2026, but this may be difficult to model. It will probably be easier in the future when there is more data on how "top-of-funnel" work translates into future pledges.

Hi Ollie. Thanks for the update.

I updated the last sentence of this comment, and some of its text went out of format. I am sharing a print below because I cannot copy the text which is out of format.

Hi Richard. Great post.

Suppose we’re torn between multiple moral theories, accounts of which entities are truly sentient, or other broad “worldviews”. How we respond to this uncertainty may be very different depending on whether we opt for maximizing expected choiceworthiness or worldview diversification. The former involves centralized agency, weighing the possible stakes of each option in proportion to the credibility of the theory that assigns it such stakes, and then potentially going “all in” on whatever option yields the best prospect in expectation. Perhaps a good approach for ideal agents, but (I suggest) too risky for the rest of us. The latter alternative decentralizes and devolves power or resources to an ensemble of subagents representing different philosophical worldviews in rough proportion to their credibility.^[3]

Maximising expected choiceworthiness involves diversification because the cost-effectiveness of each intervention decreases with spending. Going "all in" on the option with the highest marginal cost-effectiveness would only make sense for a very limited budget (until the highest marginal cost-effectiveness decreases to the 2nd highest marginal cost-effectiveness). The optimal number of options supported increases as the spending increases. I wonder if maximising expected choiceworthiness with adequate modelling of how marginal cost-effectiveness decreases with spending would lead to a more principled diversification than worldview diversification as practiced today.

It is also worth keeping in mind that wide uncertainty across interventions and worldviews should push one towards supporting interventions decreasing that uncertainty. I think there is often lots of discussion about how to distribute resources across interventions which involve very few aiming to decrease the uncertainty about the optimal allocation. I would like to see much more research on animal sentience, and, more broadly, on comparing welfare across species.

I don’t necessarily want to discourage anyone who is more willing to personally go all-in on a neglected high-impact cause area (shrimp welfare, for example). Especially if you imagine what your ideal moral portfolio would look like at the level of all of society, you might well find that going “all in” on the most neglected of your ideal cause areas is — on present margins — actually the best way for you to diversify society’s moral portfolio, and make up for others’ mistaken neglect of important causes.

The point above may also apply to large funders? Coefficient Giving (CG) directed "over $1 billion" in 2025, and 1.18 billion $ is 0.001 % of the gross world product (GWP) in 2025 of 118 T$.