This Thursday, March 26, from 5-7pm UK time, we are hosting a live discussion of the debate week topic here in the comments. It’ll be quite like this previous symposium.
You can comment throughout the week on our discussion thread, but I’m organising this event to serve as a focal point — a pre-agreed time when interested people will be online and ready to respond to comments.
How it works:
- Any forum user can write a comment that asks a question or introduces a consideration, the answer of which might affect people’s answer to the debate statement.
- The symposium’s signed-up participants (listed below) will be online between 5-7pm GMT on Thursday, to respond to your comments.
- To be 100% clear - you, the reader, are very welcome to join in any conversation on this post. You don't have to be a listed participant to take part.
Our participants:
@Jo_🔸 : Jo works in animal welfare, with a focus on neglected species. He’s also written some great and under-rated pieces about transformative AI and animals.
@Alistair Stewart: Alistair is Development & Partnerships Manager at the Center for Reducing Suffering. He organised AI, Animals, & Digital Minds London 2025 and is currently co-organising Sentient Futures Summit London 2026. He has written about AGI & Animals:
- The Animal Gap in AI Governance
- And with Niki Dupuis, What failure looks like for animals
Lee Wall: Lee just finished an AIxBio ERA fellowship. Last year he gave a really cool talk on the idea of aligning AI agents to animal preferences via reinforcement learning. You can watch it here.
@Hannah McKay🔸: Hannah is an animal welfare research analyst at Rethink Priorities, where she has researched and written on farmed shrimp welfare, wild animal welfare and more. Lately, she’s been thinking about what the future of AI means for animal welfare.
What to do now?
- Add the event to your google calendar, so you don’t forget.
- Write a comment, for the participants to respond to on Thursday.
