This project is centered on the Ψ Interspecific Affect GPT, an experimental AI tool developed by the Welfare Footprint Institute to support interspecific affective comparisons within the Welfare Footprint Framework. The tool is available through WFI’s AI Tools and Applications page.
The scientific rationale, methodological approach, and current workflow are described in this article.
The initial focus is on provisional, evidence-informed hypotheses about the maximum plausible intensity of Pain that members of selected animal taxa may be capable of experiencing, expressed relative to human-anchored reference categories. These estimates concern potential affective capacity, not the intensity that animals ordinarily experience.
For each taxon, the tool produces an explicit reasoning dossier addressing taxonomic scope, the plausibility of sentience, relevant neurobiological, behavioral, cognitive, pharmacological, evolutionary, and ecological evidence, competing hypotheses, arguments against the preliminary conclusion, uncertainty, a provisional affective-capacity ceiling, and priorities for further research.
The project would test both the substantive interspecific conclusions and the broader research workflow. Expected outputs could include:
- critically audited dossiers for approximately three to five selected taxa;
- a structured dataset recording AI claims, citation checks, errors, omissions, human corrections, and unresolved uncertainties;
- an analysis of recurrent AI failure modes and variation across repeated runs;
- recommendations for improving the tool’s instructions, evidence standards, knowledge base, and evaluation protocol; and
- depending on the maturity of the results, a technical report, preprint, academic manuscript, EA Forum post, or a combination of these.
