Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
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Progress for factory-farmed animals is far too slow. But it is happening. Practices that once seemed permanent — like battery cages and the killing of male chicks — are now on a slow path to extinction. Animals who were once ignored — like fish and even shrimp — are now finally seeing reforms, by the billions.
It’s easy to gloss over such numbers. So, as you read the wins below, I encourage you to consider each of these animals as an individual. A hen no longer confined to a cage, a chick no longer macerated alive, a fish no longer dying a prolonged death.
I also encourage you to reflect on the role you and your fellow advocates and funders played in these wins. I’m inspired by what you’ve achieved. I hope you will be too.
1. About Cluckin’ Time. Over 1,000 companies globally have now fulfilled their pledges to go cage-free. McDonald’s implemented its pledge in the US and Canada two years ahead of schedule, sparing seven million hens from cages. Subway implemented its pledge in Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, and Indonesia. Yum Brands, owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, reported that for 25,000 of its restaurants it is now 90% cage-free. These are not cheap changes: one UK retailer, Lidl, recently invested £1 billion just to transition part of its egg supply chain to free-range.
2. The Egg-sodus: Cracking Open Cages. In five of Europe’s seven biggest egg markets — France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK — at least two-thirds of hens are now cage-free. In the US, about 40% of hens are — up from a mere 6% a decade ago. In Brazil, where large-scale cage-free production didn’t exist a decade ago, about 15% of hens are now cage-free. And in Japan, where it still barely exists, the nation’s largest egg buyer, Kewpi
Thank you for making this thread Clifford, and we're really grateful for all feedback! We're working hard as a team to improve the course and the infrastructure we have for hosting other courses, and everyone's feedback has been incredibly valuable on our journey thus far :)
I feel like I have a much better sense of what the current approaches to alignment are, what people are working on and how underdeveloped the field is. In general, it’s been a while since I’ve spent time studying anything so it felt fun just to dedicate time to learning. It also felt empowering to take a field that I’ve heard a lot about at a high level and make it clearer in my mind.
I think doing the Week 0 readings are an easy win for anyone who wants to demystify some of what is going on in ML systems, which I think should be interesting to anyone, even if you’re not interested in alignment.
I became much more motivated to work on making AI go well over the period of the course, I think mainly because it made the problem more concrete but likely just spending more time thinking about it. That said, it’s hard to disentangle this increased motivation from recent events and other factors.
For anyone who is considering the course: TYPE III AUDIO is making audio narrations for the Alignment and Governance courses. The series is due to launch later this month, but some 50+ episodes are already available.
I'm quite glad I took the course!
Quick takes:
I was using Claude for dumb reasons — I don't have a strong sense for how it compares to GPT-4 on this.
I definitely feel it was worth the time for me personally. It was great for learning about the field of AI alignment (problems and proposed solutions). I was hoping the course would spend more time on arguments for and against AI being an x-risk, but unfortunately there was little of that, so it didn't change my mind much.
I think the value I got from the course is that my interactions with AI content are richer. It’s like trying to understand an ecosystem after getting a better prescription for my glasses.