About

We care about the welfare of all sentient beings that can feel and suffer, including humans and animals. We extend the same consideration to new and emerging forms of sentience, such as potential artificial minds. Sentience raises deep open questions: where uncertainty remains, we choose caution.

We are especially focused on the future. As transformative AI (TAI) and other emerging technologies reshape the world, the number of beings affected and the scale on which they're affected could dwarf anything we see today. Additionally, we focus on nonhuman welfare because we believe it is largely neglected. We think our work can complement, and possibly even facilitate, human flourishing as well.

In practice, we currently prioritize the intersection of TAI and nonhuman welfare for animals and artificial minds. Our expertise and community are strongest in these areas and there is a clear niche for us to fill.

We think advanced AI is likely the most consequential development in human history, and it could radically change our world within the next few years. For nonhuman beings, TAI could entrench and scale up factory farming, lock in systems that treat animal suffering as irrelevant, and create entirely new kinds of suffering we have not yet encountered. At the same time, it could be part of the solution. The gameboard is being flipped, and very few people are thinking about what that means. The future is hard to predict, so we're committed to staying nimble and evidence-based to prepare for a wide range of possibilities.

We think transformative AI (TAI) has the potential to dramatically impact animals, for better or worse, and the movement is currently under-prepared for it. Our programs and events help animal advocates get ready by anticipating what is coming, updating their strategy, finding neglected opportunities, and building pertinent skills and connections.

As an on-ramp for TAI readiness, we also engage with present-day topics that are synergistic with TAI, such as new advocacy tools, pro-animal precision farming systems, and alternative proteins. By supporting this work, we improve immediate outcomes for animals, learn by doing, and hedge our bets on AI development.

The AI safety field is growing quickly and much of its current work focuses on aligning AI with human interests. Notably, aligning AI with humans does not guarantee good outcomes for nonhuman beings (see EA Forum AGI & animals poll). What has served humans in the past has often been disastrous for animals. We help the AI field steer toward more positive future trajectories for all sentient beings: for example, by supporting work to benchmark how AI systems treat animals, engaging AI labs with considerations they might otherwise overlook, and connecting labs with important stakeholders who care about nonhuman welfare.

Many researchers regard artificial sentience as a serious possibility, and some believe it could plausibly emerge within the next several years. If it does, the scale of potential suffering could be unprecedented, which is why we think the topic warrants careful attention now. We aim to help the field grow by curating educational resources, creating development opportunities, and facilitating connections, so that researchers and advocates can make progress on the open questions in machine consciousness.