Summary
I’m a CS student and I’m new to the world of animal ethics. This week, I realized that the AI models we use every day aren’t actually neutral. They are taught to see animals as products. I want to talk about why we should treat this like a “bug” that needs fixing.
How I got here
I’m based in Mumbai and mostly spend my time building websites and learning how to code. I always thought AI was just a tool to make things more efficient. But after starting this fellowship and watching the AI & Animals documentary, I realized I was missing a huge part of the picture.
The “Bug” in the system
The thing that really stuck with me was how LLMs talk about animals. If you ask about a chicken, the AI usually starts talking about recipes or meat.
It’s like the code has been taught that “Chicken” only equals “Food.”
As a developer, this feels like a classification error. We’ve ignored the fact that these are sentient beings with their own lives.
If we don’t fix these “default” settings now, every app we build in the future will just keep repeating this mistake.
We are still in the early stages
One big thing I learned is that we are in a narrow window of time. AI is growing so fast, and the values we put into it today are going to stay there for a long time. It’s a lot easier to fix the foundation of a house while you’re building it than it is to try and change it after the whole building is up.
What I want to do next
I’m still just starting out, but I want my career to mean something. I don’t want to just optimize things for profit; I want to help build tools that actually care about welfare. I’m looking for open-source projects where I can learn from people who are already doing this work.
Questions I’m thinking about
Is it actually possible to write code that measures an animal’s well-being instead of just how fast it grows?
How can students like me get involved in “Ethical AI” without needing a PhD first?
References
Written as part of the Sentient Futures AI x Animals Fellowship, Group 8.
I’m brand new to this, so if you have any tips or know of any cool open-source projects for beginners, please let me know!
Well written and you raised a really concerning issue.
I agree this looks important. (It is kind of hard to say what to do about this.)