The Sentience Institute Podcast

“I call this the emotional alignment design policy. So the idea is that corporations, if they create sentient machines, should create them so that it's obvious to users that they're sentient. And so they evoke appropriate emotional reactions to sentient users. So you don't create a sentient machine and then put it in a bland box that no one will have emotional reactions to. And conversely, don't create a non sentient machine that people will attach to so much and think it's sentient that they'd be willing to make excessive sacrifices for this thing that isn't really sentient.”

• Eric Schwitzgebel

Why should AI systems be designed so as to not confuse users about their moral status? What would make an AI system sentience or moral standing clear? Are there downsides to treating an AI as not sentient even if it’s not sentient? What happens when some theories of consciousness disagree about AI consciousness? Have the developments in large language models in the last few years come faster or slower than Eric expected? Where does Eric think we will see sentience first in AI if we do?

Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in philosophy of mind and moral psychology.  His books include Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic (with Russell T. Hurlburt), Perplexities of Consciousness, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, and most recently The Weirdness of the World.  He blogs at The Splintered Mind.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• AI systems must not confuse users about their sentience or moral status introduction (3:14)
• Not confusing experts (5:30)
• Not confusing general users (9:12)
• What would make an AI system sentience or moral standing clear? (13:21)
• Are there downsides to treating an AI as not sentient even if it’s not sentient? (16:33)
• How would we implement this solution at a policy level? (25:19)
• What happens when some theories of consciousness disagree about AI consciousness? (28:24)
• How does this approach to uncertainty in AI consciousness relate to Jeff Sebo’s approach? (34:15)
• Consciousness and artificial intelligence insights from the science of consciousness introduction (36:38)
• How does the indicator properties approach account for factors relating to consciousness that we might be missing? (39:37)
• What was the process for determining what indicator properties to include? (42:58)
• Advantages of the indicator properties approach (44:49)
• Have the developments in large language models in the last few years come faster or slower than Eric expected? (46:25)
• Where does Eric think we will see sentience first in AI if we do? (50:17)
• Are things like grounding or embodiment essential for understanding and consciousness? (53:35)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“Ultimately, if you want more human-like systems that exhibit more human-like intelligence, you would want them to actually learn like humans do by interacting with the world and so interactive learning, not just passive learning. You want something that's more active where the model is going to actually test out some hypothesis, and learn from the feedback it's getting from the world about these hypotheses in the way children do, it should learn all the time. If you observe young babies and toddlers, they are constantly experimenting. They're like little scientists, you see babies grabbing their feet, and testing whether that's part of my body or not, and learning gradually and very quickly learning all these things. Language models don't do that. They don't explore in this way. They don't have the capacity for interaction in this way.”

• Raphaël Millière

How do large language models work? What are the dangers of overclaiming and underclaiming the capabilities of large language models? What are some of the most important cognitive capacities to understand for large language models? Are large language models showing sparks of artificial general intelligence? Do language models really understand language? 

Raphaël Millière is the 2020 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience in the Center for Science and Society and a Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University. He completed his DPhil (PhD) in philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he focused on self-consciousness. His interests lie primarily in the philosophy of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He is particularly interested in assessing the capacities and limitations of deep artificial neural networks and establishing fair and meaningful comparisons with human cognition in various domains, including language understanding, reasoning, and planning.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• How Raphaël came to work on AI (1:25)
• How do large language models work? (5:50)
• Deflationary and inflationary claims about large language models (19:25)
• The dangers of overclaiming and underclaiming (25:20)
• Summary of cognitive capacities large language models might have (33:20)
• Intelligence (38:10)
• Artificial general intelligence (53:30)
• Consciousness and sentience (1:06:10)
• Theory of mind (01:18:09)
• Compositionality (1:24:15)
• Language understanding and referential grounding (1:30:45)
• Which cognitive capacities are most useful to understand for various purposes? (1:41:10)
• Conclusion (1:47:23)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“Speciesism being socially learned is probably our most dominant theory of why we think we're getting the results that we're getting. But to be very clear, this is super early research. We have a lot more work to do. And it's actually not just in the context of speciesism that we're finding this stuff. So basically we've run some studies showing that while adults will prioritize humans over even very large numbers of animals in sort of tragic trade-offs, children are much more likely to prioritize humans and animals lives similarly. So an adult will save one person over a hundred dogs or pigs, whereas children will save, I think it was two dogs or six pigs over one person. And this was children that were about five to 10 years old. So often when you look at biases in development, so something like minimal group bias, that peaks quite young.”

• Matti Wilks

What does our understanding of human-animal interaction imply for human-robot interaction? Is speciesism socially learned? Does expanding the moral circle dilute it? Why is there a correlation between naturalness and acceptableness? What are some potential interventions for moral circle expansion and spillover from and to animal advocacy?

Matti Wilks is a lecturer (assistant professor) in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She uses approaches from social and developmental psychology to explore barriers to prosocial and ethical behavior—right now she is interested in factors that shape how we morally value others, the motivations of unusually altruistic groups, why we prefer natural things, and our attitudes towards cultured meat. Matti completed her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, and was a postdoc at Princeton and Yale Universities.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• What matters ethically? (1:00)
• The link between animals and digital minds (3:10)
• Higher vs lower orders of pleasure/suffering (4:15)
• Psychology of human-animal interaction and what that means for human-robot interaction (5:40)
• Is speciesism socially learned? (10:15)
• Implications for animal advocacy strategy (19:40)
• Moral expansiveness scale and the moral circle (23:50)
• Does expanding the moral circle dilute it? (27:40)
• Predictors for attitudes towards species and artificial sentience (30:05)
• Correlation between naturalness and acceptableness (38:30)
• What does our understanding of naturalness and acceptableness imply for attitudes towards cultured meat? (49:00)
• How can we counter concerns about naturalness in cultured meat? (52:00)
• What does our understanding of attitudes towards naturalness imply for artificial sentience? (54:00)
• Interventions for moral circle expansion and spillover from and to animal advocacy (56:30)
• Academic field building as a strategy for developing a cause area (1:00:50)
  
  

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“Robot rights are not the same thing as a set of human rights. Human rights are very specific to a singular species, the human being. Robots may have some overlapping powers, claims, privileges, or immunities that would need to be recognized by human beings, but their grouping or sets of rights will be perhaps very different.”

• David Gunkel

Can and should robots and AI have rights? What’s the difference between robots and AI? Should we grant robots rights even if they aren’t sentient? What might robot rights look like in practice? What philosophies and other ways of thinking are we not exploring enough? What might human-robot interactions look like in the future? What can we learn from science fiction? Can and should we be trying to actively get others to think of robots in a more positive light?

 David J. Gunkel is an award-winning educator, scholar, and author, specializing in the philosophy and ethics of emerging technology. He is the author of over 90 scholarly articles and book chapters and has published twelve internationally recognized books, including The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012), Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix (MIT Press 2016), and Robot Rights (MIT Press 2018). He currently holds the position of Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University (USA). 

 Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• Why robot rights and not AI rights? (1:12)
• The other question: can and should robots have rights? (5:39)
• What is the case for robot rights? (10:21)
• What would robot rights look like? (19:50)
• What can we learn from other, particularly non-western, ways of thinking for robot rights? (26:33)
• What will human-robot interaction look like in the future? (33:20)
• How artificial sentience being less discrete than biological sentience might affect the case for rights (40:45)
• Things we can learn from science fiction for human-robot interaction and robot rights (42:55)
• Can and should we do anything to encourage people to see robots in a more positive light? (47:55)
• Why David pursued philosophy of technology over computer science more generally (52:01)
• Does having technical expertise give you more credibility (54:01)
• Shifts in thinking about robots and AI David has noticed over his career (58:03)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“And then you're like, actually, I can't know what it's like to be a bat—again, the problem of other minds, right? There's this fundamental divide between a human mind and a bat, but at least a bat's a mammal. What is it like to be an AI? I have no idea. So I think [mind perception] could make us less sympathetic to them in some sense because it's—I don't know, they're a circuit board, there are these algorithms, and so who knows? I can subjugate them now under the heel of human desire because they're not like me.”

• Kurt Gray

What is mind perception? What do we know about mind perception of AI/robots? Why do people like to use AI for some decisions but not moral decisions? Why would people rather give up hundreds of hospital beds than let AI make moral decisions?

Kurt Gray is a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. He studies morality, politics, religion, perceptions of AI, and how best to bridge divides.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• How did a geophysicist come to be doing social psychology? (0:51)
• What do the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding do? (3:11)
• What is mind perception? (4:45)
• What is a mind? (7:45)
• Agency vs experience, or thinking vs feeling (9:40)
• Why do people see moral exemplars as being insensitive to pain? (10:45)
• How will people perceive minds in robots/AI? (18:50)
• Perspective taking as a tool to reduce substratism towards AI (29:30)
• Why don’t people like using AI to make moral decisions? (32:25)
• What would be the moral status of AI if they are not sentient? (38:00)
• The presence of robots can make people seem more similar (44:10)
• What can we expect about discrimination towards digital minds in the future? (48:30)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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And for an applied ethics perspective, I think the most important thing is if we want to minimize suffering in the world, and if we want to minimize animal suffering, we should always, err on the side of caution, we should always be on the safe side. 

• Thomas Metzinger

Should we advocate for a moratorium on the development of artificial sentience? What might that look like, and what would be the challenges?

Thomas Metzinger was a full professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz until 2022, and is now a professor emeritus. Before that, he was the president of the German cognitive science society from 2005 to 2007, president of the association for the scientific study of consciousness from 2009 to 2011, and an adjunct fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for advanced studies since 2011. He is also a co-founder of the German Effective Altruism Foundation, president of the Barbara Wengeler Foundation, and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. In 2009, he published a popular book, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, which addresses a wider audience and discusses the ethical, cultural, and social consequences of consciousness research. From 2018 to 2020 Metzinger worked as a member of the European Commission's high level expert group on artificial intelligence.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• 0:00 introduction
• 2:12 Defining consciousness and sentience
• 9:55 What features might a sentient artificial intelligence have?
• 17:11 Moratorium on artificial sentience development
• 37:46 Case for a moratorium
• 49:30 What would a moratorium look like?
• 53:07 Social hallucination problem
• 55:49 Incentives of politicians
• 1:01:51 Incentives of tech companies
• 1:07:18 Local vs global moratoriums
• 1:11:52 Repealing the moratorium
• 1:16:01 Information hazards
• 1:22:21 Trends in thinking on artificial sentience over time
• 1:39:38 What are the open problems in this field, and how might someone work on them with their career?

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“We think that the most important thing right now is capacity building. We’re not so much focused on having impact now or in the next year, we’re thinking about the long term and the very big picture… Now, what exactly does capacity building mean? It can simply mean getting more people involved… I would frame it more in terms of building a healthy community that’s stable in the long term… And one aspect that’s just as important as the movement building is that we need to improve our knowledge of how to best reduce suffering. You could call it ‘wisdom building’… And CRS aims to contribute to [both] through our research… Some people just naturally tend to be more inclined to explore a lot of different topics… Others have maybe more of a tendency to dive into something more specific and dig up a lot of sources and go into detail and write a comprehensive report and I think both these can be very valuable… What matters is just that overall your work is contributing to progress on… the most important questions of our time.”

• Tobias Baumann

There are many different ways that we can reduce suffering or have other forms of positive impact. But how can we increase our confidence about which actions are most cost-effective? And what can people do now that seems promising?

Tobias Baumann is a co-founder of the Center for Reducing Suffering, a new longtermist research organisation focused on figuring out how we can best reduce severe suffering, taking into account all sentient beings.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Who is currently working to reduce risks of astronomical suffering in the long-term future (“s-risks”) and what are they doing? (2:50)
• What are “information hazards,” how concerned should we be about them, and how can we reduce them? (12:21)
• What is the Center for Reducing Suffering’s theory of change and what are its research plans? (17:52)
• What are the main bottlenecks to further progress in the field of work focused on reducing s-risks? (29:46)
• Does it make more sense to work directly on reducing specific s-risks or on broad risk factors that affect many different risks? (34:27)
• Which particular types of global priorities research seem most useful? (38:15)
• What are some of the implications of taking a longtermist approach for animal advocacy? (45:31)
• If we decide that focusing directly on the interests of artificial sentient beings is a high priority, what are the most important next steps in research and advocacy? (1:00:04)
• What are the most promising career paths for reducing s-risks? (1:09:25)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“If some beings are excluded from moral consideration then the results are usually quite bad, as evidenced by many forms of both current and historical suffering…  I would definitely say that those that don’t have any sort of political representation or power are at risk. That’s true for animals right now; it might be true for artificially sentient beings in the future… And yeah, I think that is a plausible priority. Another candidate would be to work on other broad factors to improve the future such as by trying to fix politics, which is obviously a very, very ambitious goal… [Another candidate would be] trying to shape transformative AI more directly. We’ve talked about the uncertainty there is regarding the development of artificial intelligence, but at least there’s a certain chance that people are right about this being a very crucial technology; and if so, shaping it in the right way is very important obviously.”

• Tobias Baumann

Expanding humanity’s moral circle to include farmed animals and other sentient beings is a promising strategy for reducing the risk of astronomical suffering in the long-term future. But are there other causes that we could focus on that might be better? And should reducing future suffering actually be our goal?

Tobias Baumann is a co-founder of the Center for Reducing Suffering, a new longtermist research organisation focused on figuring out how we can best reduce severe suffering, taking into account all sentient beings.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Why moral circle expansion is a plausible priority for those of us focused on doing good (2:17)
• Tobias’ view on why we should accept longtermism — the idea that the value of our actions is determined primarily by their impacts on the long-term future (5:50)
• Are we living at the most important time in history? (14:15)
• When, if ever, will transformative AI arrive? (20:35)
• Assuming longtermism, should we prioritize focusing on risks of astronomical suffering in the long-term future (s-risks) or on maximizing the likelihood of positive outcomes? (27:00)
• What sorts of future beings might be excluded from humanity’s moral circle in the future, and why might this happen? (37:45)
• What are the main reasons to believe that moral circle expansion might not be a very promising way to have positive impacts on the long-term future? (41:40)
• Should we focus on other forms of values spreading that might be broadly positive, rather than expanding humanity’s moral circle? (48:55)
• Beyond values spreading, which other causes should people focused on reducing s-risks consider prioritizing (50:25)
• Should we expend resources on moral circle expansion and other efforts to reduce s-risk now or just invest our money and resources in order to benefit from compound interest? (1:00:02)
• If we decide to focus on moral circle expansion, should we focus on the current frontiers of the moral circle, such as farmed animals, or focus more directly on groups of future beings we are concerned about? (1:03:06)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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We [Faunalytics] put out a lot of things in 2020. Some of the favorites that I [Jo] have, probably top of the list, I’m really excited about our animal product impact scales, where we did a lot of background research to figure out and estimate the impact of replacing various animal products with plant-based or cultivated alternatives. Apart from that, we’ve also done some research on people’s beliefs about chickens and fish that’s intended as a starting point on a program of research so that we can look at the best ways to advocate for those smaller animals… [Rethink Priorities’] bigger projects within farmed animal advocacy include work on EU legislation, in particular our view of how much do countries comply with EU animal welfare laws and what we can do to increase compliance. Jason Schukraft wrote many articles about topics like how the moral value of animals differs across species. There has been a review of shrimp farming. I [Saulius] finished an article in which I estimate global captive vertebrate numbers. And Abraham Rowe posted an article about insects raised for food and feed which I think is a very important topic.

• Jo Anderson and Saulius Šimčikas

There have been many new research posts relevant to animal advocacy in 2020. But which are the most important for animal advocates to pay close attention to? And what sorts of research should we prioritize in the future?

Jo Anderson is the Research Director at Faunalytics, a nonprofit that conducts, summarizes, and disseminates research relevant to animal advocacy. Saulius Šimčikas is a Senior Staff Researcher at Rethink Priorities, a nonprofit that conducts research relevant to farmed animal advocacy, wild animals, and several other cause areas associated with the effective altruism community.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Faunalytics and Rethink Priorities’ research in 2020 relevant to animal advocacy (1:40) 
• Jo and Saulius’ work on polling about fish welfare (5:37)
• The impact of replacing different types of animal products (12:27)
• To what extent should animal advocates focus on legislative campaigns rather than corporate campaigns? (16:29)
• Experiences and turnover in the animal advocacy movement (24:33)
• New research on the difficulties of scaling up cultured meat (28:15)
• New research about the promise of lectures to reduce students’ animal product consumption (32:16)
• Charity Entrepreneurship’s (many) new intervention reports (36:54)
• How the idea of longtermism should affect animal advocacy (39:32)
• Other exciting effective animal advocacy research published in 2020 (45:51)
• How does all this research actually lead to impact for animals? What is the theory of change? (50:06)
• How do you decide or prioritize which specific research topic to pursue? (56:41)
• What are the pros and cons of working on multiple cause areas within a single research nonprofit? (1:00:11)
• What are the pros and cons of various different types of research? (1:05:21)
• What are the main bottlenecks that the farmed animal movement and its contributing research organizations face? (1:18:17)
• What routes into effective animal advocacy research roles did Jamie, Jo, and Saulius take and what is the relative importance of effective animal advocacy familiarity vs. formal research experience? (1:23:49)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“Why inner transformation, why these practices are also built into model: unless we root out the root cause of the issue, which is disconnection, which is a lack of understanding that we are interrelated, and therefore I have an inherent responsibility to show up in the world with kindness and compassion and to reduce the harm and the suffering that I cause in the world. Unless we’re able to do that, these problems are still going to exist. The issues of race relations still exist. How many years have people been fighting for this? The issue of homophobia, of racism, whatever it is, they still exist; why do they still exist after so much work, after so much money has been poured into it, after so many lives have been lost, so many people have been beaten and spilled their blood? They’ve shed their tears for these issues. Because unless we address the underlying schisms within human consciousness, within us as individuals, it’s still going to exist; it’s still going to be there. Direct impact, indirect impact, I just want to see impact and if you’re someone who wants to make an impact, I want to hear from you.

• Ajay Dahiya

Animals are harmed in all continents in the world. But how can we support the advocates seeking to help them? And what sort of support is most needed?

Ajay Dahiya is the executive director of The Pollination Project, an organisation which funds and supports grassroots advocates and organizations working towards positive social change, such as to help animals.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• How the Pollination Project helps grassroots animal advocates (1:20)
• How we can support grassroots animal advocacy in India and build a robust movement (12:48)
• How the grants and support offered concretely benefit the grantees (19:22)
• The application and review process for The Pollination Project’s grant-making (24:00)
• What makes good grantees? And how does The Pollination Project evaluate them? (27:34)
• How does The Pollination Project identify and evaluate grantees? (35:14)
• How important is the non-financial support that the Pollination Project offers relative to the financial support? (44:54)
• What similarities and differences does The Pollination Project have to other grant-makers that support effective animal advocacy? (55:23)
• What are the difficulties of making grants in lots of different countries? (1:02:00)
• To what extent are grassroots animal advocates constrained by a lack of funding? (1:06:26)
• Why doesn’t The Pollination Project’s prioritize some of the work that it does over others? Isn’t this kind of prioritization necessary in order to maximize positive impact? (1:10:00)
• What are the main challenges that The Pollination Project faces, preventing it having further impact? (1:29:05)
• What makes good grant-makers? (1:31:58)
• How Ajay’s experience as a monk came about and how it affects his work as a grant-maker (1:34:37)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“The main work that really needs to be carried out here is work in the intersection of animal welfare science and the science of ecology and other fields in life science… You could also build a career, not as a scientist, but say, in public administration or government. And you can reach a position in policy-making that can be relevant for the field, so there are plenty of different options there… Getting other interventions accepted and implemented would require significant lobby work. And that’s why having people, for instance, if you have people who are sympathetic to reducing wild animal suffering, and they are working in, say, national parks administration or working with the agricultural authorities, forest authorities, or whatever, these people could really make a significant difference.”

• Oscar Horta

Animals in the wild suffer, often to a large degree, because of natural disasters, parasites, disease, starvation, and other causes. But what can we do as individuals to help them? What are the most urgent priorities?

Oscar Horta is a Professor of philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela and a co-founder of the nonprofit Animal Ethics. He has published and lectured in English and other languages on topics including speciesism and wild animal welfare.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Why should animal advocates and researchers think more carefully about the definition of speciesism? (1:40)
• Why Oscar believes framing our messaging in terms in speciesism and focusing on attitudes rather than behavior would help advocates to do more good (9:10)
• How relevant is existing research to the proposed research field of welfare biology, that would consider wild animals among other animals, and how can we integrate it? (16:40)
• What sorts of research are most urgently needed to advance the field of welfare biology and how can people go about pursuing this? (21:13)
• Careers related to helping wild animals in policy (36:10)
• What you can do if you already work at an animal advocacy organization or are interested in growing the field in other ways (39:45)
• The size of the current wild animal welfare movement in and the work of relevant nonprofits (51:40)
• How can we most effectively build support for this sort of work among other animal advocates and effective altruists? (57:33)
• How can we most effectively build a new academic field? (1:02:49)
• To what extent is public-facing advocacy desirable at this point? (1:10:09)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“We want there to be animals like elephants, who on average have very good lives, rather than animals who tend to have very bad lives… If you have, say, a population of animals who reproduce by laying a million eggs. On average, only two of them would survive… Due to how the life history of animals is in many cases, we are not really speaking here about exceptions but rather about the norm. It's very common for animals to have lives that contain more suffering — sometimes much more suffering — than positive wellbeing… Regarding what needs to change most urgently, first of all we need to get more people involved. And also, of course, more funding would be greatly appreciated, because this is a severely underfunded field of research and advocacy.”

• Oscar Horta

Animals in the wild suffer, often to a large degree, because of natural disasters, parasites, disease, starvation, and other causes. But is there actually anything we can do to help them? And would that even be desirable?

Oscar Horta is a Professor of philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela and a co-founder of the nonprofit Animal Ethics. He has published and lectured in both English and Spanish on topics including speciesism and wild animal welfare.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• The work that is currently been done to help wild animals and what needs to change (2:08)
• The “idyllic view of nature” and why it seems incorrect (7:47)
• How can we best help wild animals? What should we focus on now? (25:19)
• Which interventions seem promising to help wild animals on a larger scale? (36:18)
• How does the case for intervention to help wild animals depend on different ethical theories? (46:27)
• Does uncertainty about the indirect effects of our actions to help wild animals make this area less promising? (54:09)
• Can we still help wild animals if we’re concerned about wild animals’ autonomy? (58:47)
• Does the case for working on wild animal welfare depend on an overall view about whether wild animals have lives that are net negative or net positive? (1:02:46)
• If we’re concerned about problems that will be large in scale over very long-term time horizons, should we still prioritize wild animal issues? (1:13:15)
• Why Oscar believes the concept of moral status should be abandoned (1:21:50)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“Our challenge is one where investigations are very hard. The people who do this work, I cannot tell you how smart they are. They are doing all kinds of research, not just getting the footage. The footage is the last thing they’re getting; they’re doing so much more to be able achieve that footage, including thinking strategically through: How do we achieve that strategic plan that we’ve laid out which includes securing broiler policies, enforcing egg policies. And what we’re trying to do is not just telling stories that engage the public. They are underpinned by a bigger strategy. We worked on a campaign with McDonalds and we did undercover investigations into McDonalds egg-laying hens; undercover investigations followed by a coalition campaign that then led to them adopting cage-free eggs as their policy. And that is the precise formula that you want.”

• Leah Garcés

Mercy For Animals’ interventions affect the lives of hundreds of millions of animals. But how do we go from these impressive achievements to the end of factory farming? And what strategies should advocates be employing to help animals most effectively?

Leah Garcés is the president of Mercy For Animals and previously founded Compassion in World Farming’s US branch. She’s also the author of the book Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Mercy For Animals’ plan for ending factory farming (1:45)
• How MFA decides which countries to focus its work on (9:06)
• Why MFA advocates for pigs, chickens, and fish, but not insects yet (17:45)
• The opportunities presented by COVID-19 for animal advocacy (20:19)
• How MFA maximizes the positive impact of its factory farm investigations (29:10)
• The priorities in corporate welfare campaigns and how advocates can avoid encouraging “humanewashing” by the meat industry (40:42)
• MFA’s marketing funnel for volunteers and capacity-building programmes (48:59)
• How Leah thinks about long-term trends and impact for animals on longer timeframes (53:20)
• How MFA has changed its approach to plant-based advocacy (1:06:50)
• The different countries that MFA operates in and how its role varies by country (1:13:48)
• How Leah’s career has developed and her tips for founding new nonprofits (1:19:34)
• The biggest bottlenecks preventing MFA from having even more impact than it already does (1:24:31)
• The importance of increasing operational expertise in the farmed animal movement (1:31:18)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“In my career, one of the things that I’ve focused on the most is developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium. And I think recognising that things occasionally go through real transformations with radical change has changed people’s understanding of what we can expect out of government. It’s a much more fruitful way to think about how policy changes within government. It is true that for the most part, governments are very status quo oriented. But every once in a while, that’s thrown out and people recognise that there’s a crisis or a certain set of policy actors are discredited and other people come in and follow a different paradigm. And I think those events are relatively rare compared to the periods of stability, but if we don’t understand them then we can’t understand long periods of policy history in any domain.”
- Frank Baumgartner

Governmental policies are not fixed indefinitely; social change is possible. But does change happen incrementally or dramatically and suddenly? And how can individuals or social movements best use their time and resources to encourage positive social change?

Frank Baumgartner is a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an author of many books, including Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, and The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• The role that financial resources play in efforts to encourage policy change (1:51)
• The methodology used in Agendas and Instability and the research priorities for political science as a field (11:26)
• The theory of “punctuated equilibrium” as a representation of how policy changes (15:23)
• The implications of the theory of punctuated equilibrium for seeking radical policy change rather than smaller incremental policy changes (21:13)
• The importance of public support for policy change (29:30)
• The importance of framing for determining policy outcomes (33:56)
• The importance of the tone of the media coverage of specific sub-topics of social issues and what this implies for social movement strategy (40:46)
• The value of linking policy reforms to underlying problems that people would like to see solved (56:18)
• The importance of having credible professional communities that can develop workable policy solutions (1:03:25)
• Critiques of Frank Baumgartner’s work plus alternative theories and methodologies (1:08:06)
• The relevance of Frank Baumgartner’s work for the question of “How tractable is changing the course of history?” (1:11:11)
• The extent to which Frank Baumgartner’s various findings apply outside the US and the differences between countries (1:14:16)
• How you can use your career to most effectively encourage policy change (1:28:28)
• How Frank Baumgartner’s own career has developed, how his work relates to “advocacy,” and his recommendations for other researchers (1:34:12)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“There’s a relatively clear path on dramatically reducing the costs of the cell culture media. So I’d say it's definitely the most pressing bottleneck… not perhaps the most technically involved bottleneck… The recombinant proteins are by far the driving source of those cost contributions where probably anywhere from over 90 to 95% or more of the cost contribution of cell culture media today comes from those recombinant proteins. An independent group at Northwestern University in Chicago came out with a paper this past year… they were able to drop that cost of the media to around 11 dollars per liter… that was a 97% cost reduction in media that this group basically did for fun just to demonstrate that it can be done.”
- Elliot Swartz

Animal-free food technologies, such as new plant-based foods that accurately mimic animal products and cultured meat (meat cultured from animal cells without requiring the slaughter of any animals) have the potential to dramatically displace the consumption of conventional animal products. But what are the bottlenecks in the way of successfully scaling up and reducing the costs of these products? And how can these bottlenecks be overcome?

Dr Elliot Swartz is a senior scientist at The Good Food Institute and the author of a number of in-depth resources on cultured meat. He has previously worked as a consultant in the biotech industry.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• The different stem cell-types that can be used to develop cultured meat, what work still needs to be done in this area, and how it can be done (5:26)
• Cell culture media as the most pressing bottleneck, and the clear path towards addressing this (19:06)
• Scaling up bioprocessing and bioreactors (39:55)
• Scaffold biomaterials as a fourth technical bottleneck (49:43)
• The technical bottlenecks in the way of the improvement and scale-up of highly meat-like plant-based meats and the career paths that are relevant to this area (58:41) 
• How Elliot started to get involved in the animal-free food tech space and the similar opportunities that might exist for others to enter the space by synthesizing existing research (1:09:30)
• The lack of funding for research in the space and how this compares to the availability of talent as a bottleneck towards further progress (1:19:39)
• The pros and cons (beyond funding) of seeking technical research opportunities in academic vs. for-profit environments (1:30:09)
• To what extent medical advances in tissue engineering and related areas will drive progress on cultured meat (1:41:19)
• The importance of and opportunities for startups to operate a business-to-business model in the animal-free food technology space (1:45:52)
• When will cultured meat and highly meat-like plant-based meat products become competitive with conventional products in terms of cost and taste? (1:49:02) 
• Should the proponents of animal-free food be prioritizing cultured meat or plant-based meat? (1:56:02)
• The skills and characteristics that would make someone an excellent researcher in the cultured and high-tech plant-based meat space (1:58:50)
• The transferability of career capital between academia, startups, and nonprofits and between research into high-tech plant-based meats and cultured meat (2:04:18)
• Concrete opportunities for getting work in this space (2:07:46)
• Which forms of academic and professional expertise are most urgently needed for the development of animal-free food technologies (2:13:43)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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Social movements often seek to shift public opinion and mobilize supporters on a large scale. But which tactics achieve these goals most effectively? And how have social movements achieved this in the past?

Dr Laila Kassam is a co-founder of Animal Think Tank and the co-editor of the forthcoming book, Rethinking Food and Agriculture: New Ways Forward.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• “The social movement ecology” and the theoretical framework that Animal Think Tank uses (3:10)
• The importance of public opinion for social change, and the pros and cons of actions that polarize public opinion (16:35)
• The evidence base the Animal Think Tank and This Is An Uprising use, and the weaknesses of using social movement evidence to glean strategic knowledge for the farmed animal movement (20:55)
• Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion — what they’re doing, why, and Animal Think Tank’s lessons from the first actions (25:48)
• Sacrifice, demandingness, and mass arrests as potential motivators and demotivators for activists (33:07)
• Creative actions, stunts, gimmicks and the effects that these have on perceptions of social movements (42:07)
• The value of confrontational tactics like Direct Action Everywhere’s disruption of Bernie Sanders’ rally (49:30)
• Whether veganism or “active and sustained participation” in the movement is more tractable (55:38)
• Animal Think Tank’s current research priorities (1:02:22)
• Other resources that Animal Think Tank recommends reading (1:09:12)
• Rethinking Food and Agriculture — Laila’s co-edited book and the value of expertise in “sustainable agriculture” for the farmed animal movement (1:17:17)
• Laila’s experience with international development work and her concerns with this field (1:25:15)
• The importance of funding constraints for Animal Rebellion and other organisations focusing on building a mass protest movement (1:33:08)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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“The three things that need to be done for Asia are capacity building, capacity building, and capacity building. There’s this tendency of wanting to do things at a global level, having uniformization across countries. But a lot of these policies that are written at the global level are not worth the paper that they’re printed on if there isn’t enough or more focus on building capacity on the ground. And it requires someone with grit to be there at the local level, speaking the local language, understanding the situation there. And I guess more and more international groups should be looking at building capacity rather than just nationwide or international treaties and legislation.”
 - Jayasimha Nuggehalli

Asia contains a large proportion of the world’s total farmed animal population. But what actions can be taken to most effectively reduce animal suffering in that context? And how can we build the capacity of local animal advocacy movements?

Jayasimha Nuggehalli is a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Global Food Partners, a new nonprofit helping companies to implement animal welfare commitments in Asia. He was the Country Director of HSI’s work in India and has participated in animal advocacy in India for over 20 years.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• How and why Global Food Partners works with companies using, producing, and selling animal products, and why they do this in Asia (1:40)
• The objections that companies give to making further welfare commitments (13:24)
• Why Global Food Partners offers a “book and claim” credit trading platform to companies to support them to switch their “conventional eggs” to cage-free without passing on costs directly to consumers (17:19)
• Where pledges that affect Asian supply chains originate — Asian commitments compared to Western and international commitments — how this differs by country, and how Global Food Partners prioritize between different countries (21:42)
• How Global Food Partners secures its meetings and finds clients (32:59)
• How Global Food Partners’ work affects the profitability of the production and sale of animal products (35:02)
• How we can encourage better enforcement of existing animal protection laws in India — “capacity building, capacity building, and capacity building” as the key priority (43:39)
• The association between animal activism and right-wing political views in India (1:01:52)
• The pros and cons of focusing on companion animals in India (1:08:15)
• The main changes to the animal advocacy movement in India over the last 20 years (1:17:08)
• The origin stories of HSI India and PETA India, plus the importance of having local employees in animal advocacy organizations (1:24:21)
• Jayasimha’s career advice for advocates seeking to make progress for animals in Asia and the skills that are most urgently needed, such as animal welfare science and supply chain management (1:31:22)
• How transferable management and leadership experience from outside the animal advocacy movement is to the animal advocacy context (1:46:01)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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I think we forget sometimes because we look at Impossible, we look at Beyond, that they’re the tip of the spear, but there’s so much work and so much opportunity out there… We need to get to all the categories… Seafood in general is very, very underserved. And so getting access to amazing talented entrepreneurs who are going to focus on seafood… there’s a huge opportunity there, because that is such a level of high need. And there’s other categories like that, but I think… cheap, plant-based replacements specifically is an area of opportunity, and seafood is as well. There’s focus on burgers and hot dogs and products like that, especially in beef, and not enough focus yet on many of the other species that we need to get to.
- Lisa Feria

Investing in animal-free food technology startups offers opportunities to disrupt animal agriculture while making a profit. But is high counterfactual impact not irreconcilable with good returns on investment? And what kinds of entrepreneurs and companies seem most promising?

Lisa Feria is the CEO of Stray Dog Capital, a group that invests in high-tech plant-based food and cellular agriculture startups. She also helped to found GlassWall Syndicate, a group of investors who collaborate to support animal-free food technology startups.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• How Stray Dog Capital evaluates which companies are likely to deliver good returns on investment and the skills that entrepreneurs need to succeed (2:25)
• How companies can make high-quality projections and estimates about their chances of success and expected market share (19:45)
• How Stray Dog Capital evaluates the impact of companies and how this affects their investments (24:35)
• Why Beyond Meat was such a success story for its investors and why IPOs (initial public offerings) are the “gold standard” for maximising return on investment (30:55)
• Why Stray Dog Capital focuses on early stage investments, how crowded the space of impact investing in animal-free food tech is, and the counterfactual impact of investments (33:35)
• The trade-off between counterfactual impact and return on investment (55:05)
• Why Lisa is optimistic about continued growth and opportunities for animal-free food technology (1:02:22)
• How Stray Dog Capital collaborates with other investors through GlassWall Syndicate (1:05:48)
• The markets and geographies that Stray Dog Capital is most interested in, and the importance of pre-existing demand for animal-free foods (1:07:54)
• Broad vs. animal focus in terms of the impact and strategy of startups (1:12:10)
• The expected impact (and challenges) of cellular agriculture / cultured meat companies compared to plant-based companies (1:16:27)
• Projected timelines for when cellular agriculture products will become cost-competitive with conventional animal products, and how investors deal with this uncertainty (1:24:15)
• Why more animal-free food tech entrepreneurs should focus on neglected product categories like seafood and chicken replacements (1:28:45)
• Career preparation for working at impact investment groups and as entrepreneurs at animal-free food tech startups (1:36:58)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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Since about 75% or so (and that’s just a rough estimate)... of plant-based products on the market today are actually made on off-the-shelf meat processing equipment, we’re looking to actually change that part of the industry by actually designing new production equipment that is appropriate for the production of plant-based meat… By creating new production methods and new equipment at Rebellyous, we can bring down the cost of plant-based meat, increase the quality, and increase the volume of our products to well beyond what it is currently, [just] 0.2% of the meat industry.
- Christie Lagally

Many advocates hope that conventional animal products will eventually be entirely replaced by animal-free foods. But what are the challenges in the way of achieving this goal? What role can entrepreneurs play in encouraging change?

Christie Lagally is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Rebellyous Foods, a company that is working to produce high-quality plant-based chicken nuggets in large quantities. She previously worked for 15 years in mechanical engineering and has also worked with the Good Food Institute and volunteered for the Humane Society of the United States.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Why and how Rebellyous Foods focuses on developing better tools for scaling the production of plant-based products (2:02) 
• The specific equipment types and processes that the plant-based food industry currently relies on that need to be replaced (7:34)
• The uses and limitations of extruders (16:45)
• Who designs, produces, and sells the equipment that is used in plant-based products (19:02)
• The technical difficulties in producing plant-based chicken products compared to plant-based burgers (24:52)
• Developing plant-based fish products (33:14)
• Business to business vs. business to consumer strategies (36:43)
• The importance of branding in marketing animal-free food tech products (41:00)
• The use of engineering experience in developing plant-based foods (43:07)
• The importance of mission alignment in working in animal-free food technology startups (50:23)
• The transferability of experience in nonprofits to work in animal-free food technology companies (52:28)
• Christie’s experience with political actions for animals and views on the interaction between animal advocacy nonprofits and the animal-free food technology movement (56:45)
• The investment and support that Rebellyous Foods has received and the role of impact investment (1:04:48)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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More positive contact [with an outgroup] reduces prejudice. No matter how you measure it, no matter how you set up your study design, once there’s a positive contact situation, you lower prejudice towards the outgroup... These effects tend to be stronger among those higher on social dominance orientation and those higher on right-wing authoritarianism, which makes intergroup contact quite a good and efficient strategy to reduce prejudice among those who seem to be initially prejudiced towards outgroups.
- Kristof Dhont

Recent psychological research on intergroup contact and human-animal relations has implications for effective animal advocacy strategy. But what are the most action-relevant findings? And how can researchers maximize their positive impact for animals?

Kristof is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Kent. He founded and directs a research group focused on the “Study of Human Intergroup and Animal Relations at Kent.” He recently edited the book Why We Love and Exploit Animals and organises the Animal Advocacy Conference: Insights from the Social Sciences.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Kristof’s most action-relevant work for animal advocates and the audience of his work (1:29)
• Finding the balance between academic rigor and making work accessible to advocates (6:15)
• SHARKLab and the academic field of human-animal relations (13:28)
• Connections between right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and animal exploitation (26:02)
• “Vegetarianism threat,” its correlates, and its causes (41:12)
• The pros and cons of advocacy focusing on children (55:38)
• Research on human intergroup interactions and what this suggests about farmed animal advocacy (58:08)
• The importance of intergroup contact (including between humans and animals) being experienced as positive, in order to improve attitudes towards outgroups (1:12:32)
• The “secondary transfer effect” of intergroup contact, where reducing prejudice towards one outgroup also reduces prejudice towards other outgroups (1:14:52)
• How research careers and training in academia compare to research careers in nonprofits and more independent skills development (1:18:05)
• Advice on PhD applications and on research careers (1:31:16)
• The interaction between researchers in the academic sphere and the “effective animal advocacy” sphere (1:47:55)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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