This is a really interesting project, thanks for sharing! Did you get any insights into how these attitudes might vary between animals/products? I assume people will feel a lot more disgusted about the idea of autonomous farms for e.g. cows and pigs than for e.g. insects, fish, and shrimp, and maybe chickens. (You might have seen this already but in theory you can already buy autonomous insect farms.) I guess public attitudes to this will also vary a lot between countries and cultural contexts.
Generally I think it’s really helpful to start thinking about our messaging around AI’s role in animal farming—there seems like a big risk of industry ‘AI-washing’ their products and making out that all their animals now receive round-the-clock individualized care when actually they might just be using AI to maximise productivity and cut costs, with potentially minimal welfare gains.
Thanks Max! I actually have not dived as deeply into the question as I would like, but hope to over the coming months. I agree: the public response towards cows and pigs might again intuitively be more repulsed than towards insects and shrimp. I had not seen the link, thanks for the share.
I hadn’t thought about the second paragraph, and I think this kind of research might help to mitigate some of those statements? The issue might also be that it will be rather difficult to gain access without significant funding and time to these kinds of systems—how can farming companies’ claims be disproven? If we can’t disprove those kinds of claims, can we change the public’s general moral view of factory farms?
This is a really interesting project, thanks for sharing! Did you get any insights into how these attitudes might vary between animals/products? I assume people will feel a lot more disgusted about the idea of autonomous farms for e.g. cows and pigs than for e.g. insects, fish, and shrimp, and maybe chickens. (You might have seen this already but in theory you can already buy autonomous insect farms.) I guess public attitudes to this will also vary a lot between countries and cultural contexts.
Generally I think it’s really helpful to start thinking about our messaging around AI’s role in animal farming—there seems like a big risk of industry ‘AI-washing’ their products and making out that all their animals now receive round-the-clock individualized care when actually they might just be using AI to maximise productivity and cut costs, with potentially minimal welfare gains.
Thanks Max! I actually have not dived as deeply into the question as I would like, but hope to over the coming months. I agree: the public response towards cows and pigs might again intuitively be more repulsed than towards insects and shrimp. I had not seen the link, thanks for the share.
I hadn’t thought about the second paragraph, and I think this kind of research might help to mitigate some of those statements? The issue might also be that it will be rather difficult to gain access without significant funding and time to these kinds of systems—how can farming companies’ claims be disproven? If we can’t disprove those kinds of claims, can we change the public’s general moral view of factory farms?