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AI and Animals in a nutshell

AI could fundamentally transform society, with major implications for non-human animals.

• Animal communication: Projects such as Earth Species Project, Interspecies Internet, and Project CETI aim to translate the communication of non-human animals by using AI-assisted technology. Success in this field could help us to understand animals’ needs and recognize them as morally relevant beings. At the same time, it could provide humans with another means by which to exploit animals for our own benefit. It could also provide a poor, reductive version of animals’ communications that doesn’t come close to reflecting their rich inner lives.

• Alternative proteins: AI could greatly accelerate the development of cellular agriculture. For example, Machine Learning can help predict the best ingredients and conditions for the media used in cellular agriculture, making the process more efficient and cost-effective. It could also greatly accelerate the development of plant-based animal product alternatives, including by improving the ‘extrusion process’ that helps create textures and structures that mimic those of traditional animal-based meats.

• Animal testing: Several organizations are using AI to analyze existing toxicity data and extrapolate this to new products based on their ingredients, without the need for further animal testing, or to create digital simulations that can replace animal drug testing. At the same time, a lot of AI research depends on animal testing, such as research on brain-computer interfaces, which can directly cause death and suffering for a lot of animals.

• Factory farming: For example, Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) uses advanced technology to monitor and manage farmed animals. With the integration of AI, PLF will become increasingly efficient, quickly detecting health issues, stress, and other welfare concerns, and addressing these either directly or with human assistance. Depending on how this technology is used, it could greatly mitigate farmed animal suffering. However, it could also greatly exacerbate it; for example, it could allow farmers to stock animals even closer together, worsening their suffering while increasing factory farms’ profits.

• Public attitudes towards animals: AI could perpetuate and amplify speciesist tendencies present in the data it is trained on. For instance, ChatGPT’s current responses reflect the human belief that it is ethical to rear animals in cruel conditions and slaughter them so that we can eat their flesh and secretions.

• Wild animals: For example, AI systems can track the movements of animals to prevent potential hazards. Hundreds of millions of animals are currently killed as a result of road networks and windows each year in the United States alone. AI systems are helping to guide the construction of road and train underpasses based on the concentration of certain species, and they could also reduce collisions between animals and human infrastructure. However, if AI-assisted technology or infrastructure fails to properly account for wild animals, this could just make the problem worse: for example, self-driving cars may not be programmed to avoid small animals.