If I accept conventional assumptions in EA Animal welfare[1], AGI will be negative for animals in expectation. On the other hand, AGI being good for humans makes it worse for animals in expectation. However, both rogue AGI and human-friendly AGI seem positive for animals in most scenarios: it just happens that the âbadâ scenarios seem much worse than the âgoodâ scenario.
Why is that? AGI, whether rogue or human-aligned, may not decide to keep other planets free of biological animals (though it seems like a bigger risk for human-aligned AGI). And EA Animal Welfare advocates generally believe that the likelihood that wild animal welfare is negative makes such spreading of biological animals too risky.
A small chance of this decision being made outweighs the positives. This seems very unlikely with rogue AGI (0.1%, perhaps much less), but it could still dominate the scales in my view. An AGI that is more human-friendly seems at least one order of magnitude more likely to terraform other planets.[2]
That said, this doesnât flip the sign of AI safety work. This judgment is lightly held; digital minds (human-like or animal-like) are a larger portion of welfare patients in expectation; and I have no idea of what the counterfactuals are. Thus, I donât treat this as an action-guiding beliefs.
To caveat, I think terraforming is still relatively unlikely in human-friendly scenarios because biodiversity becomes less instrumentally valuable post-AGI, so memes that would favor the existence of wild animal populations would lose in popularity. Even in human lock-in scenarios, the values that control AGI wonât favor deep ecology.
How about farmed animals? Even in precision Livestock Farmingâs best and worst cases, suffering in factory farms shifts by a few orders of magnitude at most.[3] AGI makes the end of factory farming through developing alternatives more likely, though Iâm more convinced by âbiological food systems become unnecessary or unrecognizableâ than âclean meat winsâ. In the vast majority of scenarios, wild animals would be the most numerous moral patients.[4]
However, again, alien counterfactuals probably messes all of this up. If biological beings from other planets can colonize planets in our sphere of influence, then I have to put myself at 0%.
(Copied from my Symposium position statement)
If I accept conventional assumptions in EA Animal welfare[1], AGI will be negative for animals in expectation. On the other hand, AGI being good for humans makes it worse for animals in expectation. However, both rogue AGI and human-friendly AGI seem positive for animals in most scenarios: it just happens that the âbadâ scenarios seem much worse than the âgoodâ scenario.
Why is that? AGI, whether rogue or human-aligned, may not decide to keep other planets free of biological animals (though it seems like a bigger risk for human-aligned AGI). And EA Animal Welfare advocates generally believe that the likelihood that wild animal welfare is negative makes such spreading of biological animals too risky.
A small chance of this decision being made outweighs the positives. This seems very unlikely with rogue AGI (0.1%, perhaps much less), but it could still dominate the scales in my view. An AGI that is more human-friendly seems at least one order of magnitude more likely to terraform other planets.[2]
That said, this doesnât flip the sign of AI safety work. This judgment is lightly held; digital minds (human-like or animal-like) are a larger portion of welfare patients in expectation; and I have no idea of what the counterfactuals are. Thus, I donât treat this as an action-guiding beliefs.
To caveat, I think terraforming is still relatively unlikely in human-friendly scenarios because biodiversity becomes less instrumentally valuable post-AGI, so memes that would favor the existence of wild animal populations would lose in popularity. Even in human lock-in scenarios, the values that control AGI wonât favor deep ecology.
How about farmed animals? Even in precision Livestock Farmingâs best and worst cases, suffering in factory farms shifts by a few orders of magnitude at most.[3] AGI makes the end of factory farming through developing alternatives more likely, though Iâm more convinced by âbiological food systems become unnecessary or unrecognizableâ than âclean meat winsâ. In the vast majority of scenarios, wild animals would be the most numerous moral patients.[4]
However, again, alien counterfactuals probably messes all of this up. If biological beings from other planets can colonize planets in our sphere of influence, then I have to put myself at 0%.
Farmed animal welfare is negative, wild animal welfare is negative, âgoodâ and âbadâ relate to expected total welfare
Though what that looks like is still underdefined.
However, precision livestock farming offers massive near-term risks and opportunities for farmed animals, and interest in this area appears justified.
Human-friendly AGI could decide to only keep animals under human control, but that would probably not lead to massive animal populations.