Alistair Stewart

• Alistair Stewart 7 Jan 2026 11:51 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Sim­ple sum­mary of AI Safety laws

  Super helpful, thanks Joseph /​ Matilda /​ PauseAI UK team!

• Alistair Stewart 5 Jan 2026 16:17 UTC

  1 point

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  on: What does re­search­ing ar­tifi­cial sen­tience and ar­tifi­cial con­scious­ness look like?

  Great to see this Firat!

• Alistair Stewart 3 Jan 2026 17:28 UTC

  10 points

  6 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Aidan Alexander’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform

  Veganuary seeming against it is part of the bit.

  This seems to be contradicted by Wendy’s comment above.

  I’m pretty concerned (and confused) about the lack of alignment between FarmKind’s perspective and Veganuary’s on the extent of cooperation between the two ahead of the campaign launch.
  
  EDIT:

  Thom says at 34:50 in this YouTube interview:

  I hope that we haven’t implied that Veganuary was sort of in on it or something like this because I wouldn’t want to do that. That’s not the the case.

• Alistair Stewart 29 Dec 2025 22:41 UTC

  6 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Aidan Alexander’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform

  Hi Aidan, two points:

  measuring impact and saying we shouldn’t give resources to organizations that don’t perform well against these measurements

  Are FarmKind claiming that Veganuary is one of those organisations?

  There hasn’t been backlash to this campaign from average people, only EAs and animal advocates.

  Depends what you mean by “backlash”—kind of unclear to me what backlash from average (non-vegan) people would look like, especially given I suspect most of them who have read a headline about it think this is just an anti-vegan campaign.

  The comments on the Daily Mail piece (which should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, given it’s the Daily Mail + online comments in 2025) look quite a lot like backlash to me though.

• Alistair Stewart 22 Nov 2025 15:12 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing ClusterFree: A cluster headache ad­vo­cacy and re­search ini­ti­a­tive (and how you can help)

  Great work, thanks Alfredo and others

• Alistair Stewart 18 Nov 2025 20:20 UTC

  13 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: New dona­tion op­por­tu­nity: the Cen­ter for Wild An­i­mal Welfare

  Awesome to see this, and I couldn’t think of better people to be leading it than Richard and Ben!

• Alistair Stewart 11 Nov 2025 13:59 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Part 3/​4: Scru­ti­nis­ing Ob­jec­tions to (Tra­di­tional) Abo­li­tion­ist Approaches

  I think this is well put together and extremely interesting Dhruv. I set it as the reading for a Revolutionists’ Night a couple of weeks ago, which I didn’t end up attending as I was sick, but I’ll try to catch up on what was discussed and let you know when we next cross paths!

• Alistair Stewart 22 Oct 2025 10:43 UTC

  2 points

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  on: AI and An­i­mal Welfare: A Policy Case Study from Aotearoa New Zealand Policy

  Thanks for writing this up Karen – interesting and important.

• Alistair Stewart 19 Oct 2025 20:52 UTC

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Emerg­ing ev­i­dence on treat­ing cluster headaches with DMT

  Given the intensity of the suffering caused by cluster headaches and humans’ welfare range (i.e. our capacity for suffering), I think this is extremely important work – thank you.

• Alistair Stewart 8 Oct 2025 12:52 UTC

  5 points

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  on: AGI × An­i­mals Wargame

  A sobering and important read. Thanks to Constance and the team at Sentient Futures for running it!

• Alistair Stewart 25 Sep 2025 15:23 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Me­tacrisis as a Frame­work for AI Governance

  As someone new to metacrisis thinking I enjoyed this a lot Jonah, thanks!

• Alistair Stewart 8 Sep 2025 14:11 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: K.F. Martin’s comment on: What failure looks like for animals

  Thank you! What do you mean by the corps by the way?

• Alistair Stewart 4 Sep 2025 9:33 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: CB🔸’s comment on: What failure looks like for animals

  Indeed. I’m personally sympathetic to this kind of view (my ethics are heavily suffering-focused), but we wanted to make this piece pluralistic, and specifically able to accommodate the intuitions of those who think extinction of (one or more species of) wild animals would be very bad.

What failure looks like for animals

In­tent al­ign­ment with­out moral al­ign­ment prob­a­bly leads to catastrophe

Ad­dress­ing the non­hu­man gap in in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal AI gov­er­nance frameworks

• Alistair Stewart 12 Jul 2025 9:19 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JoA🔸’s comment on: AI, An­i­mals, & Digi­tal Minds 2025: Retrospective

  Thank you! And thanks for all your contributions over the weekend 🤝

AI, An­i­mals, & Digi­tal Minds 2025: Retrospective

• Alistair Stewart 9 Jul 2025 19:25 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: A shal­low re­view of what trans­for­ma­tive AI means for an­i­mal welfare

  Yes, my example and the paperclip one both seem like a classic case of outer misalignment /​ reward misspecification.

• Alistair Stewart 8 Jul 2025 17:16 UTC

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: A shal­low re­view of what trans­for­ma­tive AI means for an­i­mal welfare

  I’m very pleased more thinking is being done on this – thank you.

  I’m not sure I follow this:

  Pushing for “animal-friendly” values may be harmful if it skews trajectories that are good for animals

  • As an intuition pump, imagine that animal farming (or other functional-animal mistreatment by humans) will be eradicated by default (e.g. because it will stop being economically valuable). If we manage to instill strong animal-related concerns that are not perfectly “wise” (e.g. specific ~beliefs on what is good or bad for farmed animals), then the AI(s) may perpetuate farming in some form even if that choice is unnecessary and harmful.

  Would this be an example: we instill a goal in a powerful AI system along the lines of “reduce the suffering of animals who are being farmed”. Then the AI system prevents the abolition of animal farming on the grounds that it can’t achieve that goal if animal farming ends?