I’m wondering about your factory farming analysis:
Consider the case of factory farming.[6] Even if aligned AI is committed to or neutral about animal wellbeing, it’s unclear how, or how quickly, it would “solve” factory farming. It’s possible that AI could invent a method for producing cultured meat at a fraction of the cost of conventional meat, which could cause an end to factory farming. Even so, it would likely take years to build out the infrastructure to produce lab-grown meat and make it economically competitive with traditional agriculture.
How many years do you have in mind in here? I could imagine this going pretty quickly, and much faster than historically for growing industries, because:
AI lets us skip to much more efficient alt protein production processes, instead of iterative improvement over years of R&D.
AI designs faster and more efficient resource extraction and infrastructure building processes. Or, AI designs alt protein production processes that can make good use of other processes and the market at the time.
Capital investment could be very high because of
AI-related economic growth,
interest from now far wealthier AI investors, including billionaire tech (ex-)CEOs, and/or
proof of efficient alt protein production process designs, rather than investors waiting for more R&D.
The time it takes to build alt protein production plants could be the main bottleneck, and many could be built in parallel, enough to exhaust expected demand after undercutting conventional animal products. Maybe this takes a couple of years after efficient alt protein processes are designed by AI?
Fairly speculative, of course. Seems like high ambiguity here.
More pessimistically, we probably won’t end factory farming through technology alone. People have been hesitant to switch to meat substitutes and lab-grown meat. Multinational corporations have significant financial interests in factory farming, and they will also use AI to promote their position. Cultural, political, and economic changes will be necessary.
I agree with this. However, I wonder how far off sufficient economic changes would be. People could become wealthy enough to pay for (or subsidize others for) high welfare animal products, and this could eliminate the rest of factory farming. Transitioning housing types could take some time, but with enough money thrown at it, it could be very quick. Again, fairly speculative.
You’ve identified a really weak plank in the argument against AI solving factory farming. I agree that capacity-building is not a significant bottleneck, for a lot of the reasons you present.
I think the key issue is whether there will be social and legal barriers that prevent people from switching to farmed animal alternatives. These barriers might prevent the kinds of capacity build-up that would make alternative proteins economically competitive.
I think I might be more pessimistic than you about whether people want to switch to more humane alternatives (and would do so if they were wealthier). That’s probably the case for welfare-enhanced meat (as we see with many affluent customers today). I’m less confident about willingness to switch to lab-grown meat or other alternatives.
I’m quite curious about a scenario in which: massive capacity for producing alt proteins happens without cultural buy-in, causing alt proteins to be far cheaper than animal proteins. The economic incentives to switch could cause quite swift cultural changes. But I’m quite uncertain when trying to predict culture changes.
Thanks for writing this!
I’m wondering about your factory farming analysis:
How many years do you have in mind in here? I could imagine this going pretty quickly, and much faster than historically for growing industries, because:
AI lets us skip to much more efficient alt protein production processes, instead of iterative improvement over years of R&D.
AI designs faster and more efficient resource extraction and infrastructure building processes. Or, AI designs alt protein production processes that can make good use of other processes and the market at the time.
Capital investment could be very high because of
AI-related economic growth,
interest from now far wealthier AI investors, including billionaire tech (ex-)CEOs, and/or
proof of efficient alt protein production process designs, rather than investors waiting for more R&D.
The time it takes to build alt protein production plants could be the main bottleneck, and many could be built in parallel, enough to exhaust expected demand after undercutting conventional animal products. Maybe this takes a couple of years after efficient alt protein processes are designed by AI?
Fairly speculative, of course. Seems like high ambiguity here.
I agree with this. However, I wonder how far off sufficient economic changes would be. People could become wealthy enough to pay for (or subsidize others for) high welfare animal products, and this could eliminate the rest of factory farming. Transitioning housing types could take some time, but with enough money thrown at it, it could be very quick. Again, fairly speculative.
Hi Michael!
You’ve identified a really weak plank in the argument against AI solving factory farming. I agree that capacity-building is not a significant bottleneck, for a lot of the reasons you present.
I think the key issue is whether there will be social and legal barriers that prevent people from switching to farmed animal alternatives. These barriers might prevent the kinds of capacity build-up that would make alternative proteins economically competitive.
I think I might be more pessimistic than you about whether people want to switch to more humane alternatives (and would do so if they were wealthier). That’s probably the case for welfare-enhanced meat (as we see with many affluent customers today). I’m less confident about willingness to switch to lab-grown meat or other alternatives.
I’m quite curious about a scenario in which: massive capacity for producing alt proteins happens without cultural buy-in, causing alt proteins to be far cheaper than animal proteins. The economic incentives to switch could cause quite swift cultural changes. But I’m quite uncertain when trying to predict culture changes.