Ronen Bar

Karma: 468

I am a social entrepreneur focused on advancing a new community-building initiative to ensure AI development benefits all sentient beings, including animals, humans, and future digital minds. For over a decade, my work has been at the intersection of technological innovation and animal advocacy, particularly in the alternative protein and investigative sectors.

I am the co-founder and former CEO of Sentient, a meta animal rights non-profit. My background includes work as an investigative journalist on television and undercover employment in slaughterhouses.

This is my website: The Alien Journalist
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or email (ronenbar07@gmail.com).

I am looking for a co-founder and collaborators for the new initiative to ensure AI development benefits all sentientkind. I am happy to share ideas and receive feedback.

I have been practicing Vipassana meditation for several years.

Ronen Bar 3 Aug 2026 18:24 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Cat Kerr’s comment on: Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit
Thanks so much Cat! I will add this to the post, I see Wild Animal Initiative are funding many urban animal related studies .

What do you think about the branding of urban animals vs wild animals? do you see more gains in urban animals being inside the wild animals field, having their own “branding”, or perhaps both?
And where should we “put” the animals that are somewhere on the spectrum between urban and wild

Ronen Bar 3 Aug 2026 13:44 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Grace Szonn 🔹’s comment on: Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit
I agree cities seems like a very high potential grounds for effective interventions for EA people

Ronen Bar 14 May 2026 7:22 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Time Sensitive: Stop One of Biggest Threats for Animal Welfare
Thanks for the post, this is SO CRUCIAL!

Ronen Bar 3 Feb 2026 11:25 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 0
on: The Vegan Filter: Overcoming the Leading Barrier to Veganism
Sounds like a great idea to me!

Ronen Bar 11 Oct 2025 19:46 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: tobytrem’s Quick takes
Do we need a yearly strategy paper of the EA movement?

Ronen Bar 24 Sep 2025 16:15 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Ethical co-evolution, or how to turn the main threat into a leverage for longtermism?
I think Ethical co-evolution of humanity and AI is a very interesting concept, that on the one hand points out to humans staying in control and not handing over power and knowldge of what is “right” to AI, but on the other hand willing to learn and develop, understanding we are shortsighted when it comes to morality, and also may have a lot to learn from AI!

Ronen Bar 26 Jul 2025 9:54 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
on: Why Moral Weights Have Two Types and How to Measure Them
@Beyond Singularity Another issue is how you calculate positive vs negative valence. David Pearce thinks ethics is only about reducing negative experiences, and although it is good to make beings have more positive ones, it is not within ethics. So his view is, I think, the more extreme side of negative utilitarianism.

I think positive experiences are within the ethical realm, and although reducing suffering is more important than increasing happiness, I would still try calculate how much beings are happy as well and how to optimize that.

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 14:42 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Debate: Morality is Objective
I don’t think this large-scale cooperation or society or groups function is morality. It is linked to morality but it is fundamentally something else. A society can “function” well with having part of it suffer tremendously for the benefit of another group. There is nothing objective with longing for a world with less suffering, it is basically in another realm, not in the one of math or rational, though it is tied to rationality in some way

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 6:34 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Interstellar travel will probably doom the long-term future
I agree when thinking about the long future we have to have better more robust moral frameworks and the time and moral circle expansion are very crucial factors that have to be taken into consideration

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 6:29 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Debate: Morality is Objective
I tend to think the word objective doesn’t fit morality from a philosophical standpoint. “objective” truths are arguments that we can decide upon who is right by checking predictions, each of them is evidence for the validity of a claim. If I say earth is round, we can check this claim by talking to experts or flying to space and looking at earth, etc. All of which are prediction of subjective experiences we will have.

So “objective” argument means I am guessing something about the future world, that it will look one way and not another. Morality is in a totally different domian. I would like the future world to be with less suffering and not more, but this is a longing, not a prediction that can be refuted. So with morality there is some sense of logic and being systematic, but at the core it is not an objective question becasue it can’t be decided upon with predictions

Ronen Bar 26 Jun 2025 15:11 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Should we launch the “Animal Advocacy Corps”? Seeking Feedback and a Founder
Very interesting idea that could improve the worldwide interconnectedness of the movement. I like it very much.

Ronen Bar 24 Jun 2025 8:13 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Beyond Short-Termism: How δ and w Can Realign AI with Our Values
Thanks. I think as time horizon gets bigger, uncertainty may also get bigger, and this should be calculated into the expected value formula.

Ronen Bar 18 Jun 2025 17:37 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: nathan98000’s comment on: Moral Alignment: An Idea I’m Embarrassed I Didn’t Think of Myself
I don’t think we need to solve ethics in order to work on improving the ethics of models. Ethics may be something unsolvable, yet some AI models are and will be instilled with some values, or there will be some system to decide on the value section problem. I think more people need to work on that.
Just now a great post relating to the value selection problem was published :
Beyond Short-Termism: How δ and w Can Realign AI with Our Values

Ronen Bar 18 Jun 2025 8:51 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Chris Percy’s comment on: Will Sentience Make AI’s Morality Better?
An ASI may be much smarter in helping oneself not feel so much suffering. We as humans are good in engineering our environment, but not the inside. AI may excel in inner engineering as well… very speculative

Ronen Bar 18 Jun 2025 8:47 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: VeryJerry’s comment on: How the veil of ignorance grounds sentientism
Sure, I am happy to do that.

Ronen Bar 17 Jun 2025 10:49 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Sentience-Based Alignment Strategies: Should we try to give AI genuine empathy/compassion?
Thanks, very interesting post.

I think this is a crucial question that demands much more research. The fear the digital minds will suffer is a great concern of mine, but also from this perspective I fear that an ASI which is not sentient may not have a robust morality, no intrinsic morality, hence may in the long run not care about biological and digital suffering.

I tried to map the main questions arising from this topic in this post Will Sentience Make AI’s Morality Better?

Ronen Bar 4 Jun 2025 7:30 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How the veil of ignorance grounds sentientism
Thanks, interesting post, and I wonder how this can relate to AI and the ethical questions around AI vales

Ronen Bar 7 May 2025 5:32 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: How the Human Psychological “Program” Undermines AI Alignment — and What We Can Do
How do you think we can align humans with their own best values? is it more of a outside of the AI space societal work or is it also tied to the AI space?

I think they are both connected and we should work on both, and we really need a new story as a species for us to be able to rise up to this challenge.

Ronen Bar 17 Apr 2025 12:00 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: VeryJerry’s comment on: Developing AI Safety: Bridging the Power-Ethics Gap (Introducing New Concepts)
And thinking more long term, when AGI builds a superintelligence, that will build the next agents, and humans are somewhere 5-6 scales down the intelligence scale, what chance do we have for moral consideration and care by those superior beings? unless we realize we need to care for all beings, and build an AI that cares for all beings…

Ronen Bar 17 Apr 2025 11:57 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
on: The ‘Bad Parent’ Problem: Why Human Society Complicates AI Alignment
I think this “Human Alignment” your talking about is very important and neglected. You don’t hear a many people call for an ethical transformation as a necessary adaptive step to the AGI era…