Both are shockingly underfunded. But I think future generations will be even more shocked by how we treated (i.e. actively caused great suffering to) farm animals than by how we failed to help humans in dire need.
Denis
Karma: 506
Good analysis of this from PauseAI:
I don’t want to presume to paraphrase their analysis into one phrase, but if I were forced to, it would seem to be that there was a lot of pressure on Governor Newsom from powerful AI companies and interests, who also threatened to ruin the bill’s sponsor Scott Wiener.
Still a pity that he couldn’t resist the pressure.
It’s kind of pathetic, but this is the reality of politics today. With their money, they really can either make or break a politician, and we voters are not smart enough to avoid being taken in by their negative advertising and dirt-digging.
It’s clear that we need a much stronger movement on this. The other reason he was able to veto this bill is that the vast majority of people do not agree that AI poses a major / existential risk, and so they do not insist on the urgent action we need.
I understand they have fixed this issue, but if not, just contact them directly.
I signed up originally with an abbreviated version of my national ID number, but they preferred to correct the system and have the accurate number.
This is where we need a broad perspective.
Long-term, we solve the problem of meat-eating with artificial protein, which also solves many other problems.
Medium-term, we work to end factory-farming, which needlessly increases the suffering of animals. (I don’t want to get into it because there are many experts here and I’m not one of them, but it may be arguable that an animal which is bred for food but gets to live a decent life in a field is better off than if it hadn’t been born because people didn’t need to eat it. However, in the case of factory-farming, such an argument seems totally untenable).
Short-term, we accept that we live in an imperfect world and that most people value saving human lives, even at the cost of animal lives. So we work to save human lives and improve health and improve quality of life, and instead of losing sleep over the calculation of the net impact on animals, we support the amazing organisations who are working to end factory-farming (like Farmkind) and to develop alternative protein (like GFI).
It’s valuable to discuss questions like this, and I absolutely do not claim to have a definitive answer—all I say is that when I think about this, that’s how I rationalise it.
Hi,
I’m not sure if you’ve had any interactions with the “EU Technical Policy Fellowship” led by Training for Good. You can find a lot of information online, and I could put you in contact with the trainers/organisers if that would be helpful.
They take 12 people (out of about 300 applicants) through an intense 8-week program about how to influence EU policy towards better AI Safety Governance. I was lucky enough to be a fellow earlier this year. Many of the fellows then do a 6-month internship at an AI-focused think-tank or Civil Society organisation.
IMHO this group may be of interest to some of the fellows and/or they may be interested in volunteering to support some of the activities. I’m not sure, as the focus of the fellowship is very much on getting people into the bodies that you do not want to duplicate.
They may also just have a good network of others who may be interested—again, possibly you already have access to the same network (Brussels isn’t so big!)
There may also be potential to work with the new AI Office. I’m sure they are totally understaffed and over-worked at the moment—however, it sounds like you’re planning to do some things that they would support, so maybe they would see enabling this organisation as an effective way to meet some of their needs.
On this subject, it was nice to see Nick Kristof in the New York Times write on a related theme, comparing how we treat and respect dogs and pigs.
Opinion | Dogs Are the Best! But They Highlight Our Hypocrisy. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Great idea! Let me do this when I feel inspired and opinionated!
Wow, great example. Thanks for sharing this. Everytime I see this happening, it frustrates me, but I don’t actually have a clear idea of how to talk about it.
That’s really interesting, and makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing!
Absolutely. Definitely this is still better than a world where people say “it’s OK to whip a horse!”
It’s OK to kill and eat animals—but don’t get caught slapping one.
I agree fully with the sentiment, but IMHO as a logical argument it fails, as so many arguments do, not in the details but in making a flawed assumption at the start.
You write: “Clearly, in such a case, even though it would cost significant money, you’d be obligated to jump into the pond to save the child.”
But this is simply not true.
For two reasons:If we are obligated, it is by social pressure rather than ethics. If we thought people would find out about it, of course we’d feel obligated. But if not, maybe we would walk past. The proof of this is in exactly what you’re trying to discourage—the fact that when faced with a similar situation without the same social pressure, most people do not feel obligated.
The scenario you describe isn’t realistic. None of us wear $5000 suits. For someone who wears a $5000 suit, you’re probably right. But for most of us, our mental picture of “I don’t want to ruin my clothes” does not translate to “I am not willing to give up $5000.” I’m not sure what the equivalent realistic scenario is. But in real cases of people drowning, choking or needing to be resuscitated, many people struggle even to overcome their own timidity to act in public. We see people stabbed and murdered in public places and bystanders not intervening. I do not see compelling evidence that most strangers feel morally compelled to make major personal risks or sacrifices to save a stranger’s life. To give a very tangible example, how many people feel obligated to donate a kidney while they’re alive to save the life of a stranger? It is something that many of us could do, but almost nobody does. I know that is probably worth more than $5000, but it’s closer in order-of-magnitude than ruining our clothes.
Absolutely, it would be a better world for all of us if people did feel obliged to help strangers to the tune of $5000, but we don’t live in that world … yet.
The drowning child analogy is a great way to help people to understand why they should donate to charities like AMF, why they should take the pledge.
But if you present it as a rigorous proof, then it must meet the standards of rigorous proof in order to convince people to change their minds.
Additionally, my sense is that presenting it as an obligation rather than a free, generous act is not helpful. You risk taking the pleasure and satisfaction out of it for many people, and replacing that with guilt. This might convince some people, but might just cause others to resist and become defensive. There is so much evidence of this, where there are immensely compelling reasons to do things that even cost us nothing (e.g. vote against Trump) and still they do not change most people’s behaviour. I think we humans have developed very thick skins and do not get forced into doing things by logical reasoning if we don’t want to be.
Formidable !!
Great work Jen and Romain !
If you’re desperate enough, I’m pretty good at BOTEC, and my French, while not great, isn’t as bad as some other people’s in the cohort, according to Romain …
Let me know if I can help!
This is fantastic!
First, because for too long the “good guys” have been doing “activist” things without the kind of impact that law-makers bring, while the “bad guys” have basically cut to the chase and gone directly to the halls of power, with lobbying, bribes (legal, in the form of support of campaigns, but basically they are bribes), etc. It’s important that the good guys start fighting where it really matters.
Second, because your plan is solid, tangible and achievable.
IMHO, there is a huge range of action where political action would have strong popular support. While the vast majority of people are not “animal activists”, they also would oppose many of the practices of factory farming (witness the success of campaigns against caged hens) - if they knew about them. So there is scope to make changes that will not seem radical (e.g. ruling that animals must be allowed outside and have space to move and be killed humanely and really basic stuff) which would have a huge impact on animal welfare.
You don’t need the politician to say “we need to all become vegans and no more meat-eating”—because, especially in France, that will not work. But a politician could say “We love our farmers. But there is a minority of farmers who are giving others a bad name by mistreating animals, and we will not tolerate that.” Then if the farming-lobby (which anyway doesn’t represent the majority of small farmers) want to come out and argue that it’s not a minority, let them. I think it’s a minority of farmers, but the majority of farm animals who are subject to factory-farming practices.
So I can see CAP having a massive impact. Good luck!
PS did you intentionally choose CAP as a name (which, at least in anglophone countries, brings to mind the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy—which may be one of the key things you’d want to change in the long term)?
I love that you wrote this.
I am so sick of seeing countries praised for having “enlightened” immigration policies when what they actually do is accept the migrants they need for their economy and reject the rest.
They always justify this on the basis of the rights of individual migrants, but the net outcome is that some rich country has avoided the cost of educating and training a person with valuable skills, while some poor country has been deprived of the services of someone whom they paid to educate and train—but also, potentially, of one of the people who would have added a lot of value to their country.
It’s difficult to see this in most typical jobs (doctors, engineers, nurses, …), but anyone who follows football (i.e. soccer) will understand how this works. The best soccer players from Africa and South America play in Europe. If we focus on their individual rights, then it feels unfair to deny them the chance to emigrate. But if we focus on the rights of people in their home countries, this is daylight robbery—countries which produce some of the best players in the world have mediocre leagues, while rich countries have high quality leagues, often mostly with foreign players.
Obviously, in the case of football, it’s not such a big deal. And, with football, at least they can still watch on tv, and the players will still (mostly) be available for the national team.
With other jobs, the person is just lost to the country, and the result will be an inferior quality of life for those who remain.
If we accept that the individual’s rights to emigrate trump those of their country of origin, at minimum we need some form of compensation which is appropriate to the scale of the problem.
I don’t have a solution—but sometimes I worry that we’re very quick to jump to the conclusion that the individual’s freedom is more important than everything else, especially when it’s convenient. The countries who use this argument don’t hesitate to deny the same freedom to immigrate to people who do not have useful skills, and they don’t seem to lose too much sleep over it.
It will be very difficult for cultivated meat to scale in a world where 99% of people and 99.99% of politicians just stick their heads in the sand and pretend the current systems—with massive animal suffering, climate damage, antibiotic use and increasing land-use—is sustainable.
Once we stop thinking of this as “can we make it work?” but as “we have to make this work!” we’ll discover solutions.
For example, regarding contamination (comments below), maybe the right approach is not to look for 0% risk of contamination, but to find the right sweet-spot, even if that means some batches need to be discarded. Remember that the correct comparison for this is not pharma, but rather factory farming, with animals often living in their own excrement and being pumped full of antibiotics to keep them “healthy”, with terrible consequences not just for the animals but also for antibiotic resistance, which is now a major cause of human deaths.
Yet, there are countries in the EU seeking to ban cultivated meat, or to stop it from being labelled “meat,” as politicians bow to the power of the powerful agriculture sector.
I don’t have a solution (I wish!), but with elections coming up in so many countries, I wonder if there’s an opportunity for many of us to ask politicians why they are not aggressively supporting and funding what is possibly the most important technological challenge the world is facing.
I don’t necessarily agree that the community is either complacent or complicit, but I do agree that this is potentially a massive reputational hazard. It’s not about anyone proving that EA’s are racist, it’s just about people starting to subconsciously associate “racism” and “EA”, even a tiny bit. It could really hurt the movement.
Again, as per my comment above, I think there is great value in a firm rebuttal from a credible voice in the UK EA community.
It’s just absurd that one email from nearly 30 years ago, taken out of context, is being used to tar an entire global community.
We also need to remember that back in 1996, when the email was written, the world was not in the state it’s in now where people believe that any phrase, even if uttered provocatively or in jest, can be taken literally and assumed to represent a person’s true beliefs, even if there are 10000 examples of them saying the exact opposite. I remember when I was in college it was quite normal to write or say shocking things just to get a reaction or a laugh, we didn’t yet have the mentality that you shouldn’t write or say anything that you wouldn’t be happy to see on the front page of the Times.
I found this very concerning. I posted it but then a helpful admin showed me where it was already posted, I need to be better at searching :D
When we consider the impact of this, we need to forget for a moment everything we know about EA and imagine the impact this will have on someone who has never heard of EA, or who has just a vague idea about it.
I do not agree at all with the content of the article, and especially not with the tone of the article, which frankly surprised me from the Guardian. But even this shows how marginal EA is, even in the UK—that one columnist can write a pretty ill-informed and unresearched article, and apparently nobody challenged it.
BUT: I also see an opportunity. If someone credible from the UK EA community were to write an even, balanced rebuttal of this piece, that might turn this into a positive. Focusing on the way that people like Tony Ord choose to live frugally and donate most of their salary to good causes as being far more reflective of EA than the constant reference to SBF (who of course is one of the very few EA’s mentioned in the article).
I’m not sure the editors at the Guardian realise how closely EA’s philosophy aligns with many of the values they promote, and maybe this is a chance to change that and get some positive publicity.
Is it random that this appeared in the New York Times yesterday, or are the two related?
How Do We Know What Animals Are Really Feeling? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Regardless, it is great to see more realisation and communication around this topic. Most people just do not make any mental association between “food” and “animal suffering”. One day this will all appear utterly barbaric, the way slavery appears barbaric to us today even though some highly reputed figures throughout history owned slaves.
The more communication we have around animal consciousness and suffering, the faster that will happen.
The best kind of communication may well be the kind that is not “accusatory”—just informative. Let people think about it for themselves rather than telling them what to think.
Ultimately, maybe the best hope for ending animal suffering is alternative protein, and it is shocking how little money and effort is committed to this, given that it’s also critical for climate, for hunger-reduction, for resilience. Alternative protein offers the potential to tell people “here is a cheaper, healthier, tastier, climate-friendlier… alternative to meat, which also avoids animal suffering.”
There are thousands of people who would jump on that statement and say it’s unrealistic, but it’s absolutely not. It’s just that we’re not treating it like the emergency that it is, we’re not putting the same resources into it that we’re putting into making more powerful iphones. We could choose to.
Another article on this today, in the New York Times.