AI can impact animals for both good and bad, it can be used to replace some animal experiments or propagate speciesist biases. But the area in which AI has by far the most significant impact on animals is factory farming. The use of AI in factory farms will, in the long run, increase the already huge number of animals who suffer in terrible conditions.
PETER SINGER: The ethics of artificial intelligence has attracted considerable attention, and for good reason. But the ethical implications of AI for billions of nonhuman animals are not often discussed. Given the severe impacts some AI systems have on huge numbers of animals, this lack of attention is deeply troubling.
As more and more AI systems are deployed, they are beginning to directly impact animals in factory farms, zoos, pet care and through drones that target animals. AI also has indirect impacts on animals, both good and bad — it can be used to replace some animal experiments, for example, or to decode animal “languages.” AI can also propagate speciesist biases — try searching “chicken” on any search engine and see if you get more pictures of living chickens or dead ones. While all of these impacts need ethical assessment, the area in which AI has by far the most significant impact on animals is factory farming. The use of AI in factory farms will, in the long run, increase the already huge number of animals who suffer in terrible conditions.
AI systems in factory farms can monitor animals’ body temperature, weight and growth rates and detect parasites, ulcers and injuries. Machine learning models can be created to see how physical parameters relate to rates of growth, disease, mortality and — the ultimate criterion — profitability. The systems can then prescribe treatments for diseases or vary the quantity of food provided. In some cases, they can use their connected physical components to act directly on the animals, emitting sounds to interact with them — giving them electric shocks (when the grazing animal reaches the boundary of the desired area, for example), marking and tagging their bodies or catching and separating them.
You might be thinking that this would benefit the animals — that it means they will get sick less often, and when they do get sick, the problems will be quickly identified and cured, with less room for human error. But the short-term animal welfare benefits brought about by AI are, in our view, clearly outweighed by other consequences. When diseases are less frequent, more predictable and more controllable, factory farms can crowd more animals into confined spaces, thus increasing their profits. In fact, several AI companies openly advertise being able to pack more animals into a given space as a benefit of installing their systems.
In addition, when factory farms become more efficient, the price of animal products falls, leading to more demand for meat and more animals raised in factory farms. This will also make it harder for plant-based analogues and cultivated meat — meat produced from animal cells grown in bioreactors — to eventually replace factory farmed products, which could increase the scale and extend the lifetime of factory farming. This is a moral atrocity because of what it does to animals, quite apart from its disastrous consequences for the environment…
There is an urgent need to expand AI ethics so that it considers nonhuman life. And it is not only AI companies and AI scientists who are responsible for what is happening. There are several other human stakeholders, including philosophers working in AI ethics, NGOs, policymakers and lawmakers. Consumers should also understand and take responsibility for the consequences of their consumption choices.
Animals, unlike most humans, cannot participate in the design of AI. They cannot have their own social movements or tell us that a particular AI is harming them, and they will never design AI to benefit themselves. The AI industry will hire exactly zero employees who are nonhuman animals, so they will have no representatives if humans do not stand up to represent them. We need to do it — it’s on us all. SOURCE…
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