I’ve been a Researcher at Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) since October 2022. Before joining ACE, I worked in various roles in the U.K. Civil Service, most recently heading up the Animal Welfare Market Interventions team, exploring options for welfare labelling on animal products.
Max Taylor
Karma: 269
Thanks for highlighting that point Hayven—I agree, and also hope we get to the point where animals are sufficiently well represented in democratic decision-making that those kinds of conflicts are massively reduced.
Thanks Cameron! That’s a helpful point that I didn’t really touch on in this post. Great that you’re doing work in that space—I’m really interested to hear more about it so will get in touch.
Cheers Vasco! Glad you found it helpful and thanks for the useful points :-)
Thanks for this! For what it’s worth I think this is an important and under-explored area and would be really interested in seeing a longer-form post version.
Thanks Rahela, really appreciate the feedback and great to hear that you found it helpful!
Cheers Stephen, that’s really interesting! Taking your example, I can also imagine people finding ways to use this tech to e.g. track down and kill rodents in their homes more efficiently, so definitely agree this is an important area to explore in more detail.
Hey Jens, thanks a lot for your comment! I agree that moral circle expansion efforts and direct WAW interventions seem like really important elements of a portfolio of actions to bring about a net-positive future.
In terms of the unreliability of AI-specific animal advocacy actions given the uncertainty of the future: I guess there could be some pretty broad actions that would apply across various areas and scenarios, like lobbying governments to ensure that animal interests are mentioned in any cross-cutting national/international standards and regulations on responsible AI use. The best bet might be a balance of those sorts of actions with more targeted, industry-specific actions (like engaging with regulators to ensure that AI systems used in e.g. intensive chicken farming are sensitive enough to genuinely detect most welfare concerns).
Thanks for those resources on gene drives, I’ll check them out!
And cheers, watch this space! :-)
Hey, just to note that this comes across as unnecessarily, and unfairly, negative to me—I think you could have made the same points in a more collaborative and constructive way.
Thanks a lot for sharing—this looks like a really useful and incredibly comprehensive source of information! Just out of interest, do you have a rough sense for when that more layperson-friendly version that you mention will be published?
Thanks Bruce! Yes, I saw that—great to see this area getting some more funding and public attention!