I was struck that Dario (1) says that recursive self-improvement has already begun, and (2) says that rogue agents could take over “the entire Internet” within six to 12 months. (This seems similar to Ajeya’s prediction that agents could establish a more permanent rogue deployment inside an AGI company within six months).
Jacob, together with Samara Mendez, previously wrote a shallow review about butter and margarine price substitution. They found that some studies, surprisingly, show them to be complementary goods, and thought this was primarily due to weird consumer behaviour not always reflecting econ 101, and secondarily due to econ methodologies always not capturing reality.
Nice! Your theory of change makes a lot of sense to me, and I really like how you laid out why this project makes sense as well as some of the challenges. Quick question about ZISWAF: why does your impact turn on shifting non-zakat funds and not also promoting, for example, GiveWell's Zakat Fund?
Thanks Kristof, this is cool. It would be interesting to see how Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek and Kimi perform on this, as so much of the world's tobacco is used in China.
As you’ll recall, the Center for Wild Animal Welfare has been trying to start getting some practical wins for the movement. We’ve been keeping low-key about our work so far but we’re going to be sharing some more public content in the coming weeks. Much more work still needed, from lots more people!
Thanks for your continued engagement, Andrew! I think we're getting closer to agreement on the scale question :)
We agree that further research is needed to take your animal-equivalent numbers and figure out the actual reduction in animal farming if demand for meat-based companion animal food declined. I had Perplexity take a first pass, looking at a 13% drop in meat-based dog food consumption in North America and Europe, and it suggested 60 million to 130 million animals would be saved.[1] To be clear, that's a first pass, and it's still a lot of animals! I would be interested to see somebody look into this; I know @Billy Nicholles is thinking about it.
This is reasonable, on the face of it. e.g. if dogs consume 2 million farmed land animals annually, then switching those dogs to nutritionally sound vegan diets would prima facie (i.e. on the face of it), spare 2 million farmed land animals from slaughter annually [...] Those who wish to argue that something other than the prima facie outcome would occur, face the burden of providing the reasoning and data to demonstrate and quantify this.
I don't know if you can call that a prima facie outcome; the counter-argument isn't unlikely or complex, but a fairly basic claim about economics. But in any case, the burden of providing reasoning and data about how many animals would be saved lies with the researcher making claims about the "number of 'food animals' spared from slaughter" and trying to argue that vegan pet food is "a leading EA cause area".
(I do think that tractability is a more interesting and important crux, but Andrew has not replied to my comments so there's nothing further to discuss. I found some of Billy and Seth's points in the other thread constructive, though!)
I wanted to look at a 13% drop to reflect Andrew's tractability section, at dog food because vegan cat food is less reputable for health, and at North America and Europe because I'm suspicious that the breakdown about premium meat -vs- byproducts applies far outside the West. But to be clear, the drop from 7 billion is more due to economics than my assumptions; I also asked it to consider Andrew's assumptions (complete drop in dog and cat food demand globally) and it suggested 260 to 670 million animals would be saved.
uh oh
This is really exciting!
I was struck that Dario (1) says that recursive self-improvement has already begun, and (2) says that rogue agents could take over “the entire Internet” within six to 12 months. (This seems similar to Ajeya’s prediction that agents could establish a more permanent rogue deployment inside an AGI company within six months).
This is interesting and bleak. Thanks Pablo.
Jacob, together with Samara Mendez, previously wrote a shallow review about butter and margarine price substitution. They found that some studies, surprisingly, show them to be complementary goods, and thought this was primarily due to weird consumer behaviour not always reflecting econ 101, and secondarily due to econ methodologies always not capturing reality.
Nice! Your theory of change makes a lot of sense to me, and I really like how you laid out why this project makes sense as well as some of the challenges. Quick question about ZISWAF: why does your impact turn on shifting non-zakat funds and not also promoting, for example, GiveWell's Zakat Fund?
Thanks Kristof, this is cool. It would be interesting to see how Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek and Kimi perform on this, as so much of the world's tobacco is used in China.
Thanks for sharing this, Luke, this is a great overview of what WAI's been up to! I love Fig 1 especially.
Thanks for these thoughts, Nick, totally agree!
As you’ll recall, the Center for Wild Animal Welfare has been trying to start getting some practical wins for the movement. We’ve been keeping low-key about our work so far but we’re going to be sharing some more public content in the coming weeks. Much more work still needed, from lots more people!
Thanks for your continued engagement, Andrew! I think we're getting closer to agreement on the scale question :)
We agree that further research is needed to take your animal-equivalent numbers and figure out the actual reduction in animal farming if demand for meat-based companion animal food declined. I had Perplexity take a first pass, looking at a 13% drop in meat-based dog food consumption in North America and Europe, and it suggested 60 million to 130 million animals would be saved.[1] To be clear, that's a first pass, and it's still a lot of animals! I would be interested to see somebody look into this; I know @Billy Nicholles is thinking about it.
I don't know if you can call that a prima facie outcome; the counter-argument isn't unlikely or complex, but a fairly basic claim about economics. But in any case, the burden of providing reasoning and data about how many animals would be saved lies with the researcher making claims about the "number of 'food animals' spared from slaughter" and trying to argue that vegan pet food is "a leading EA cause area".
(I do think that tractability is a more interesting and important crux, but Andrew has not replied to my comments so there's nothing further to discuss. I found some of Billy and Seth's points in the other thread constructive, though!)
I wanted to look at a 13% drop to reflect Andrew's tractability section, at dog food because vegan cat food is less reputable for health, and at North America and Europe because I'm suspicious that the breakdown about premium meat -vs- byproducts applies far outside the West. But to be clear, the drop from 7 billion is more due to economics than my assumptions; I also asked it to consider Andrew's assumptions (complete drop in dog and cat food demand globally) and it suggested 260 to 670 million animals would be saved.