Quick takes

Quick take only for now because this is basically a social media post: Updates on the Animal Futures tournament in progress: https://uj-animal-futures-update.netlify.app/ Some highlights: Solid participation, one cultivated-meat approval question already resolved, and a mixed bag of forecasts for animals. Some good "news" for advocates: Forecasters give the Save Our Bacon Act 3% and the Canary Islands octopus farm 1%, expect about half of Europe's top 20 grocers to have shrimp welfare commitments, and see in-ovo sexing spreading in the EU (~44% of layers) (but barely in the US ~3%). Less good, especially for the US: ~80% for at least one more state cultivated-meat ban, 2% for plant-based reaching 10% of US retail by 2031, and low expected fulfillment of 2026 corporate chicken pledges. But I think predicting the future doesn't help much unless it informs decisions. Help us: Who should we be sharing this with? What forecast would change a grant, campaign, or policy decision? Decisionmakers: what threshold matters, and what evidence would you need? Add your comments here, on that page, or DM. And you can still play: https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/33016/ Metaculus Sentient Futures

Start with journals: a cheap governance test for AI animal-communication tools A recent Guardian feature on AI and animal communication brought renewed attention to the PEPP Framework (Prepare, Engage, Prevent, Protect), developed by NYU’s More Than Human Life Program for the responsible development and use of nonhuman animal communication technologies. PEPP is quite ambitious. Its 12 principles cover risk assessment, precaution, animal autonomy and best interests, transparency, responsibility, remediation, and other issues that could become increasingly important if AI systems get better at interpreting or reproducing animal signals. The framework is currently voluntary and its authors envisage it evolving as the field develops. My tentative view is that scientific journals may be the most promising place to start turning some of these principles into actual requirements, at least while this remains predominantly a research field. Funders have leverage, but only over the work they fund. Research ethics bodies matter earlier in the process, although their mandates and practices differ considerably across institutions and jurisdictions. Regulation will eventually matter most for some applications, especially commercial deployment or interactions with protected wildlife, but the field may still be too immature for a detailed regulatory regime. Journals occupy an unusual leverage. Publication is a recurring bottleneck across the research ecosystem, and journals already routinely require researchers to disclose ethical approval, methods, conflicts of interest and compliance with reporting standards. For research involving AI mediated communication, they could require authors to report things such as whether playback or generated signals altered animal behaviour, how risks to the animals were assessed, what validation methods were used, and whether adverse effects occurred. There is also a useful precedent from animal research itself. The ARRIVE guidelines, first

Developing Thoughts on the Animal Advocacy Community in Africa African animal advocacy movement may be under-exploring its potential and is NOT talent-constrained. Instead, the movement is currently held back by the following: Lack of strategy R&D: This stems from two sources: limited exploratory, outside-the-box thinking, and funding habits that do not reward thorough research and the development of relevant interventions. Lack of space for innovation: Few, if any, African animal advocacy organizations have a dedicated special or new projects team, because most are scrambling to keep running into the next year. Most do not dedicate enough staff and resources to developing stealth projects that could one day spin off or open a new area of work for the organization. High risk aversion? This may be an underlying reason for the constraints above and their knock-on effects. What level of risk-taking is reasonable? Who leads or guides the norm- and behavior-setting conversations that reduce in-fighting? Cost of recruiting and training people from outside the movement: Africa has an abundant talent pool, so African groups are not talent-constrained. Rather, groups are unable to absorb this talent for several reasons, which used to be reduced to "funding". Some may say funding is being unlocked, with the dollar amounts going to African groups growing year on year, and that the barrier now surfacing is the cost of bringing in people from this large talent pool and training them. However, this growth starts from a very low base, and much of it is short-term and restricted to specific projects rather than covering core costs such as recruiting and training staff. Program support and MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning): Several groups lack dedicated, experienced operational, administrative and program staff. A single person may be responsible for all three of these functions and more. As a result, proper monitoring, designated learning opportunities and communicati

With the large expected inflow of philanthropic capital, there has been a surge in interest in entrepreneurship among those who otherwise might not have pursued it. As we pursue promising new ideas, many ventures will fail. Some of these failures will be because the idea was not as good as it seemed, but many will fail because the entrepreneurs executed it poorly. I'm concerned we will abandon good ideas due to poor execution. Founders new and old should strive to make their successes and failures publicly visible (though these stories should be read critically given founder biases). More importantly, we should be skeptical of claims that an idea is bad based solely on the failure of one attempt, and we should be willing to pursue ideas more than once if we have a strong account for why the previous attempt(s) failed.

Evidence of bumblebees liking and disliking foods depending on context.

In Bruce Friedrich's new book, he writes, "Sometimes when I talk about cultivated meat someone will bring up the handful of states that have banned it. I'm mostly unconcerned. Cultivated meat companies won't be able to supply all 50 US states anytime soon anyway. Once there are multiple companies selling their products in...the majority of cities all across the country, the states that banned will-- I predict-- quietly repeal their laws" (p. 191). It's hard to know how literally to interpret this apparently sanguine attitude, as the book is designed to generate enthusiasm for alternative proteins. But, still it seems raise an important question about the cost-effectiveness of repealing existing bans or preventing further ones. Initial thoughts:   * My guess is that he'd still view preventing additional bans as important, at least in key regions expected to be first-adopters. Maybe Florida and Texas would be laggards in adoption even if cultivated meat were legal. * It'd be interesting to do an outside view analysis to see how quickly bans on other novel products have been undone once they've achieved a certain level of popularity elsewhere. * He's writing as if the industry can definitely succeed in spite of the bans. But, even if the bans spread no further, they already apply to >140M potential consumers across the US and Europe. That, combined with uncertainty about the prospect of additional bans, may chill the sort of public and private investment necessary for industry success.  

Ridglan Farms, the notorious beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin raided twice by activists this year, is officially shutting down. The pressure on them has been intense because the case has attracted quite a sizeable national attention: Glenn Greenwald, Jennifer Welch (I've Had It podcast), Lara Trump and Robert F. Kennedy have all commented on Ridglan decrying the horrors there. Lewis Bollard tweeted this out recently: https://x.com/Lewis_Bollard/status/2066542219134452209 Figured I'd share this since some EAs (including myself) were involved in the campaign to get it shut down. A big part of our theory of change was to get this kind of attention. The real question is how to extend to animals more broadly than just dogs, of course, but even this counts as a big win.

Mox Movie Nights watched Slumdog Millionaire today and it reminded me of the why behind the work. We're not here to EV-max, to gain impact points, to count utils. We're here because the world is unfair, suffering is prolific, and need to find a way through it.