Ok, my updated understanding is that Sentient Futures is primarily focused on field-building, with a view to supporting interventions as they emerge over time.

One thing I’m still trying to get a better grip on is how this translates into impact on animals, and ideally, on what timescale. I’ve had similar questions when thinking about wild animal welfare more broadly: when does investment in building a field start to produce concrete outcomes that benefit animals? 

In the AI x animals case, it seems slightly more pressing because of the time-sensitivity point. I’m trying to reconcile the idea that 'this is urgent' with an approach that is upstream and preparatory.

I’m also conscious that most of what I’m seeing is the public-facing layer, and you mentioned that a lot of the communication is happening in more private or high-context settings; so it may be that the picture looks more abstract from the outside than it does from within. 

Thanks for the invite. I’ll join the showcase. Looking forward to seeing what interventions are being worked on. 

Thanks, Martijn. Yes, that's another point of confusion; someone would need to pick up the tab for the added costs associated with better welfare. 

 

Thanks for engaging, Constance, this does answer some of my questions.

I take your point that the window for the EU AI Act was short and that missing it would have meant missing it entirely. Are there any other win-win situations have been found and packaged so far, beyond the EU AI Act?

The BOTEC is a careful piece of reasoning, but it's a model that compares two categories of work without specifying what either involves in practice. It doesn't answer my questions about what concretely gets done, and how animals stand to benefit. 

Your homepage describes Sentient Futures as existing to ‘identify the leverage points for weaving welfare into the core of future systems and cultivate the foundational community needed to activate them.’ A casual reader can’t translate that into what work is happening in real terms. 

You acknowledged the communication gap yourself; I wonder if that's where some effort could go, given you're trying to build a field that hinges on persuading people of the gravity and impact of changes that need to happen now, with time-sensitive urgency.

Oh, no. I had no idea they could be this bad. And I'm speaking from experience... is anybody working on this? 

'When EA becomes cool, people who don't care about EA show up to secure money and status. When EA becomes cool, that reputation needs defending, which is often corrosive to truth.'

I think that's very well said. 

P.S I'm also unsure of how hiring from near-misses = fewer charities. There's probably a large stockpile of finalists, just from the final 1% of previous rounds.  

Hi Joey, thanks for replying. Zooming in on this point: 'If we did closed rounds including people from prior cohorts, we would likely lose ~50% of our talent pool but save ~90% of team time on vetting and comms.'

What's a ballpark figure for the amount of money that 90% of team time represents? This is the amount that could potentially be saved per round. 

Having that figure is important; it would help one to assess whether it's a potentially good trade-off. If the amount would be substantial, then the savings could fund the fewer charities that are incubated, for example. 

They may be, although absolute candidate quality doesn't seem to be the only consideration; for context, the feedback I received as a finalist suggested a different mechanism. I was told that a main consideration was that I was relatively locked into a single idea, and that this idea was among the most popular in the cohort. 'This does mean we have to make the difficult decision of turning down talented potential founders like yourself who are better suited to some popular ideas.'

The implication was that they expected to be able to find founders for that idea regardless, so they prioritised more flexible candidates or those interested in less popular ideas in order to maximise the total number of charities launched.

So I don't think there's a pure 'fixed-bar'. Some candidates who clear the bar might still be turned down due to idea-level constraints.

I’m not sure to what extent both of these are operating simultaneously (e.g. a minimum bar + then matching), but if the latter is a meaningful factor, it seems to strengthen the case for tracking near-miss candidates across rounds rather than resetting the pool each time.

P.S I originally posted this as a quick take and have been thinking about this question in more detail since. 

Lol you had me for a moment there!