This is indeed a good idea (although it isn’t that clear to me “how to do targeted outreach to people there” woud work, but I havent done targeted outreach before)
A future where the current situation would continue, but with AI making us more powerful, would in all likelihood be a very bad one if we are to include farmed animals (it gets more complicated if you include wild animals).
Longtermism plans to colonize space and expand as much as possible would be horrifying for animals. We could bring factory farms, animal testing and see earth animals to other planets
Values and habits can lock-in for a long time—especially habits like meat eating.
For me, it sounds likely that the “expected value” of the future depends mostly on what happens to farmed and wild animals. See the Moral Weight project : “Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another”.
The case could be made that the case for concerning about farmed animals in the far future is at least as strong as the case concerning for humans in the far future.
Longtermists tend to be super optimistic that alternative proteins and cultured meat will be more efficient and cheaper, baffling people working in animal welfare.
[reasons include that factory farming goes beyond “cows+chicken+pigs” and could come to include fish and insects. It also includes silk, fashion, pigments, medical supplies, experimentation. Current AI is already boosting factory farming.]
This is indeed a good idea (although it isn’t that clear to me “how to do targeted outreach to people there” woud work, but I havent done targeted outreach before)
A future where the current situation would continue, but with AI making us more powerful, would in all likelihood be a very bad one if we are to include farmed animals (it gets more complicated if you include wild animals).
See the following relevant articles:
Optimistic longtermism would be terrible for animals:
If we don’t end factory farming soon it might be there forever :
For me, it sounds likely that the “expected value” of the future depends mostly on what happens to farmed and wild animals. See the Moral Weight project : “Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another”.
Why the expected numbers of farmed animals in the far future might be huge: