Thank you very much for taking the time to add your comment here Fai. I’m glad I posted the idea here for feedback! I’ve redacted the relevant parts of the post.
For the reasons you gave I’ll drop the idea, unless I or someone else can think of good arguments against your comment. But I think it’s quite likely you’re correct and I strongly don’t want to risk any of those negatives you outlined occuring.
I would be very interested to hear your other ideas around AI and helping animals feel free to dm me or comment them if you like.
Sorry for being late on the ideas! I posted one on another reply to Charles, here’s another one:
It is possible to get CCTV footages and then label what behavior of factory farm slaughter house workers count as cruelty/improper/not standard abiding. I think this way we can train an algorithm to constantly monitor whether works are at least treating animals with minimal decency.
It’s really impressive you changed your mind so quickly.
I don’t want to jump on discussions, and answering this fully is hard, but you did write you were stopping entirely, so I’m writing the below quickly in support.
It’s unlikely that promising, thoughtful work by EAs are going to be harmful/be captured/enhance harm by factory farming, and it’s likely a net positive.
The grand parent comment dramatically understates how much the industry actively works on/crowds out related profit maximizing research. Basically, in the same way that the ITN framework works, this reduces the risk that even talented animal welfare EAs, working on the most successful project would significantly help the industry exploit more animals.
There’s not just one, but multiple journals and subdisciplines on industrial farming of broilers and chickens.
I mean, go to this link, and keep clicking next, I’m on page 46 and there’s still articles.
There’s likely “wedges” where animal welfare, and increasing factory farming profit diverge.
One would be alleviating chronic suffering of malingering animals, who get slaughtered anyways and whose alleviation of suffering isn’t cost effective will produce more meat. Because factory farms don’t price in pain, it’s possible that making chickens happier in many situations could have major welfare improvements, without changing farming incentives.
Point #1 above suggests why there would be a wedge, because profit seeking is extensive.
I think there’s a big, giant thesis here about “welfarism”, talking about theories of change that involve collaborating/working with some farmers. These projects have been done viably and successfully by many EAs in the past, but I’m unsure anyone wants to read this right now, and I want to just write this comment quickly.
It’s really impressive you changed your mind so quickly.
I agree with this
It’s unlikely that promising, thoughtful work by EAs are going to be harmful/be captured/enhance harm by factory farming, and it’s likely a net positive.
I think in this case, the risks of causing harm consists of two parts:
The idea being posted here and possibly be seen
The idea being developed and work, and therefore being popularized in the industry
I agree with you that the probability that a post here will be clicked by industry people is low. But the probability is not 0, and I also don’t think it is vanishingly low. Also, Max can continue to talk about the idea with people who replied to the post, which significantly reduces this part of the risk.
But the second part is the majority of the risk, and the main concern I have -that we actually develop this thing. If the idea is supported by EA donors, and then works, the industry will very likely observe it, and then might follow suit and popularize it. Actually, according to the idea itself, the aim is to get a lot of chicken factory farms to use it. And then the cost reduction argument kicks in.
I’m not just saying the probability that this post will be discovered or clicked on is very low.
In my above comment, I’m saying a computer vision project, like I think the OP proposed, has a very low risk of harm, so this danger is outweighed by the value from a viable, well executed EA project along these lines (assuming that such a promising project exists).
I have these beliefs for reasons that include the following:
Someone I know, works or has knowledge of, and working experience in “AI” “machine learning” and leading experimental projects, that is probably above median EA knowledge in those areas.
Also, I think a well aligned and executed project could be more valuable than it seems from just discussion. This is because the actual implementation of a system (and welfare improving projects that don’t include “AI”) is really important. Differences in execution, which can be subtle, small, and hard to communicate, can affect welfare, more than “desk research” or non-expert discussion suggests. Assuming they can execute it, an EA can take advantage of this, and supplant/compete with alternative systems.
It’s possible that this is wrong, but I’m not immediately sure it’s possible to communicate this.
I think it’s good to write this comment, because well, EA forum discussion is like, possibly stopping potential actual EA projects, and that’s bad.
I might see one of your main points now. It might be “The grand parent comment dramatically understates how much the industry actively works on/crowds out related profit maximizing research.”
I actually addressed this too, I said, in point three of my original comment, that it’s likely that they will discover this intervention. And yes there are a lot of machine vision related projects on chicken factory farming, and therefore I think it’s most likely just a matter time they discover this specific issue of coccidiosis being able to be solved by machine vision. There I also described my concern: speeding it up might also affects the alt-protein industry.
Also, I think a well aligned and executed project could be more valuable than it seems from just discussion.
I understand where you are coming from. I am personally trying to realize a humane slaughter project. Which itself has the risk of helping the industry. I can reduce a big part of the risk by having the discussions offline. Now that Max and I got connected we can actually talk about the idea offline. But I am yet to be convinced to be not concerned about having all these online.
Also, I think I have some other ideas that don’t have such risks and could be good use of Max’s time. I will post them in another comment. But let me say one example and use it to illustrate why these ideas might be better.
Low oxygen level is a major welfare problem in aquaculture (fish and crustaceans). For fish, when they are low on oxygen, their mouths rise above the water more often and it can be seen. The difficulty for humans is that it’s hard to see, and even if they can see it they cannot count the frequency because they can’t stand they looking all day. This is where training a machine learning algorithm helps. And the reason I believe this is okay to say on the forum is because of the different math of the impact. Coccidiosis affect only ~5% of flocks, and for these affected flocks 2% of chickens die. But Max’s proposed intervention will reduce the cost of medications/vaccines for 100% of the chickens that are in the factory farms that uses Max’s proposal. But the situation is different for dissolved oxygen. When you see a few fish’s mouths, it’s likely that the whole population of fish is suffering from low oxygen. So the propotion of “short-term” benefits is much higher that we might have more confidence that it might even outweight the longterm concerns.
Thank you very much for taking the time to add your comment here Fai. I’m glad I posted the idea here for feedback! I’ve redacted the relevant parts of the post.
For the reasons you gave I’ll drop the idea, unless I or someone else can think of good arguments against your comment. But I think it’s quite likely you’re correct and I strongly don’t want to risk any of those negatives you outlined occuring.
I would be very interested to hear your other ideas around AI and helping animals feel free to dm me or comment them if you like.
Sorry for being late on the ideas! I posted one on another reply to Charles, here’s another one:
It is possible to get CCTV footages and then label what behavior of factory farm slaughter house workers count as cruelty/improper/not standard abiding. I think this way we can train an algorithm to constantly monitor whether works are at least treating animals with minimal decency.
See also this post.
It’s really impressive you changed your mind so quickly.
I don’t want to jump on discussions, and answering this fully is hard, but you did write you were stopping entirely, so I’m writing the below quickly in support.
It’s unlikely that promising, thoughtful work by EAs are going to be harmful/be captured/enhance harm by factory farming, and it’s likely a net positive.
The grand parent comment dramatically understates how much the industry actively works on/crowds out related profit maximizing research. Basically, in the same way that the ITN framework works, this reduces the risk that even talented animal welfare EAs, working on the most successful project would significantly help the industry exploit more animals.
There’s not just one, but multiple journals and subdisciplines on industrial farming of broilers and chickens.
I mean, go to this link, and keep clicking next, I’m on page 46 and there’s still articles.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Coccidiosis+chicken&btnG=
There’s likely “wedges” where animal welfare, and increasing factory farming profit diverge.
One would be alleviating chronic suffering of malingering animals, who get slaughtered anyways and whose alleviation of suffering isn’t cost effective will produce more meat. Because factory farms don’t price in pain, it’s possible that making chickens happier in many situations could have major welfare improvements, without changing farming incentives.
Point #1 above suggests why there would be a wedge, because profit seeking is extensive.
I think there’s a big, giant thesis here about “welfarism”, talking about theories of change that involve collaborating/working with some farmers. These projects have been done viably and successfully by many EAs in the past, but I’m unsure anyone wants to read this right now, and I want to just write this comment quickly.
I agree with this
I think in this case, the risks of causing harm consists of two parts:
The idea being posted here and possibly be seen
The idea being developed and work, and therefore being popularized in the industry
I agree with you that the probability that a post here will be clicked by industry people is low. But the probability is not 0, and I also don’t think it is vanishingly low. Also, Max can continue to talk about the idea with people who replied to the post, which significantly reduces this part of the risk.
But the second part is the majority of the risk, and the main concern I have -that we actually develop this thing. If the idea is supported by EA donors, and then works, the industry will very likely observe it, and then might follow suit and popularize it. Actually, according to the idea itself, the aim is to get a lot of chicken factory farms to use it. And then the cost reduction argument kicks in.
I’m not just saying the probability that this post will be discovered or clicked on is very low.
In my above comment, I’m saying a computer vision project, like I think the OP proposed, has a very low risk of harm, so this danger is outweighed by the value from a viable, well executed EA project along these lines (assuming that such a promising project exists).
I have these beliefs for reasons that include the following:
Someone I know, works or has knowledge of, and working experience in “AI” “machine learning” and leading experimental projects, that is probably above median EA knowledge in those areas.
Similar to my comment above, here is the Google scholar search “computer vision chicken broilers”. There’s a lot of papers, including some from 2016, 2017. I think many of this work is in the same vein as the project. Here’s page 10 or so:
Also, I think a well aligned and executed project could be more valuable than it seems from just discussion. This is because the actual implementation of a system (and welfare improving projects that don’t include “AI”) is really important. Differences in execution, which can be subtle, small, and hard to communicate, can affect welfare, more than “desk research” or non-expert discussion suggests. Assuming they can execute it, an EA can take advantage of this, and supplant/compete with alternative systems.
It’s possible that this is wrong, but I’m not immediately sure it’s possible to communicate this.
I think it’s good to write this comment, because well, EA forum discussion is like, possibly stopping potential actual EA projects, and that’s bad.
I might see one of your main points now. It might be “The grand parent comment dramatically understates how much the industry actively works on/crowds out related profit maximizing research.”
I actually addressed this too, I said, in point three of my original comment, that it’s likely that they will discover this intervention. And yes there are a lot of machine vision related projects on chicken factory farming, and therefore I think it’s most likely just a matter time they discover this specific issue of coccidiosis being able to be solved by machine vision. There I also described my concern: speeding it up might also affects the alt-protein industry.
I understand where you are coming from. I am personally trying to realize a humane slaughter project. Which itself has the risk of helping the industry. I can reduce a big part of the risk by having the discussions offline. Now that Max and I got connected we can actually talk about the idea offline. But I am yet to be convinced to be not concerned about having all these online.
Also, I think I have some other ideas that don’t have such risks and could be good use of Max’s time. I will post them in another comment. But let me say one example and use it to illustrate why these ideas might be better.
Low oxygen level is a major welfare problem in aquaculture (fish and crustaceans). For fish, when they are low on oxygen, their mouths rise above the water more often and it can be seen. The difficulty for humans is that it’s hard to see, and even if they can see it they cannot count the frequency because they can’t stand they looking all day. This is where training a machine learning algorithm helps. And the reason I believe this is okay to say on the forum is because of the different math of the impact. Coccidiosis affect only ~5% of flocks, and for these affected flocks 2% of chickens die. But Max’s proposed intervention will reduce the cost of medications/vaccines for 100% of the chickens that are in the factory farms that uses Max’s proposal. But the situation is different for dissolved oxygen. When you see a few fish’s mouths, it’s likely that the whole population of fish is suffering from low oxygen. So the propotion of “short-term” benefits is much higher that we might have more confidence that it might even outweight the longterm concerns.
Thanks a lot for the thoughtful replies. I’m really glad it seems like you identified useful interventions that someone like Max can work on.