I strongly agree that the animal welfare implications of AI should be owned at least as much by the AI safety space as by the animal welfare space, not that there needs to be a hard distinction between the two but there is obviously some declarative truth to it. Animal suffering is among the greatest lock-in risks.

I'm worried that many people outside the AW space believe the end of factory farming is a foregone conclusion. At one forum in SF in February mixing leaders from AI safety and AW, many AIS folks came away at least partly convinced by the AW folks that this cannot be taken for granted. AIS needs to take seriously the inside view of AW leaders that AI will not necessarily solve FAW by default, not to mention WAW.

Fair, the semantics of "going well" ultimately don't matter so I think this is clear.

Most animals are wild animals, so the answer to this question should focus on them.

I can imagine a future where most animals are farmed animals. I'm not saying it's particularly likely, but if humans spread to other planets, I think we're more likely to take factory farming with us than take nature with us. Farmed animals should be part of this convo.

From @Tristan Katz :

Most animals are wild animals, so the answer to this question should focus on them.

disagree

agree

Does WAW dwarf FAW in expectation? Or is FAW still important to consider in this discussion?

I can imagine a future where most animals are farmed animals. I'm not saying it's particularly likely, but if humans spread to other planets, I think we're more likely to take factory farming with us than take nature with us. Farmed animals should be part of this convo imo.

How am I supposed to predict whether the solution will be good for animals if I have no idea what that solution will look like?

That about sums it up haha.

I find this compelling, if discouraging.

I'm curious about this choice:

I will assume that “going well” for animals means something like “the ratio of positive experiences to negative experiences among animals is both meaningfully higher than it is today, and is above 1 (i.e. net positive)”.

I agree that animal experience is below 1 right now. I don't actually think that a continuation of the status quo is possible; for reasons explained by Ian Morris, I think we either see massive growth or some form of collapse.

That aside, though, crossing 1 seems like a slightly unfair threshold. If the current ratio is massively negative, would you stand by reducing it to something close to but below 1 not being "AGI went well for animals"?

This post is persuasive overall and caused me to update negatively on the debate motion.

I don't think this is load-bearing but this sentence:

However, it is not the number of animals that matters here, but the scale of humans’ impact on them.

I'm not certain about this distinction. Humans increasing or decreasing the number might be the largest impact, and at the same time, this seems to me to imply a greater concern for anthropogenic harm than non-anthropogenic harm. Is that what you meant?

Very cool to see this modelled!

They're animal activists from across the spectrum from EA-aligned to EA-skeptical.