The Sentience Institute Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

“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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“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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