5. How much welfare total capacity might digital minds have relative to humans/âother animals
a. Related questions include: the estimated scale of digital minds, moral weights-esque projects, which part of the model would have moral weight.
I think this is a very important uncertainty. Discussions of digital minds overwhelmingly focus on the number of individuals, and probability of consciousness or sentience. However, one has to multiply these factors by the expected individual welfare per year conditional on consciousness or sentience to get the expected total welfare per year. I believe this should eventually be determined for different types of digital minds because there could be huge differences in their expected individual welfare per year. I didthis for biological organisms assuming expected individual welfare per fully-healthy-organism-year proportional to âindividual number of neuronsâ^âexponentâ, and to âenergy consumption per unit time at rest [basal metabolic rate (BMR)] at 25 ÂșCâ^âexponentâ, and found potentially super large differences in the expected total welfare per year.
I think much more work on welfare comparisons across species is needed to conclude which interventions robustly increase welfare. I do not know about any intervention which robustly increases welfare due to potentially dominant uncertain effects on soil animals and microorganisms. I suspect work on welfare comparisons across different digital minds will be important for the same reason.
In a 2019 report from Rethink Priorities (though it could be very different now for various reasons), Saulius Simcikas found that $1 spent on corporate campaigns 9-120 years of chicken lives could be affected (excluding indirect effects which could be very important too).
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) estimatedThe Humane Leagueâs (THL) work targeting layers in 2024 helped 11 layers per $. The Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI) assumes layers have a lifespand of â60 to 80 weeks for all systemsâ, around 1.36 chicken-years (= (60 + 80)/â2*7/â365.25). So I estimate THLâs work targeting layers in 2024 improved 14.8 chicken-years per $ (= 11*1.36), which is close to the lower bound from Saulius you mention above.
Thanks for the post, Noah. I strongly upvoted it.
I think this is a very important uncertainty. Discussions of digital minds overwhelmingly focus on the number of individuals, and probability of consciousness or sentience. However, one has to multiply these factors by the expected individual welfare per year conditional on consciousness or sentience to get the expected total welfare per year. I believe this should eventually be determined for different types of digital minds because there could be huge differences in their expected individual welfare per year. I did this for biological organisms assuming expected individual welfare per fully-healthy-organism-year proportional to âindividual number of neuronsâ^âexponentâ, and to âenergy consumption per unit time at rest [basal metabolic rate (BMR)] at 25 ÂșCâ^âexponentâ, and found potentially super large differences in the expected total welfare per year.
I think much more work on welfare comparisons across species is needed to conclude which interventions robustly increase welfare. I do not know about any intervention which robustly increases welfare due to potentially dominant uncertain effects on soil animals and microorganisms. I suspect work on welfare comparisons across different digital minds will be important for the same reason.
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) estimated The Humane Leagueâs (THL) work targeting layers in 2024 helped 11 layers per $. The Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI) assumes layers have a lifespand of â60 to 80 weeks for all systemsâ, around 1.36 chicken-years (= (60 + 80)/â2*7/â365.25). So I estimate THLâs work targeting layers in 2024 improved 14.8 chicken-years per $ (= 11*1.36), which is close to the lower bound from Saulius you mention above.