80,000 Hours Podcast27 Syys 2017

#8 - Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes

Every year tens of billions of animals are raised in terrible conditions in factory farms before being killed for human consumption. Over the last two years Lewis Bollard – Project Officer for Farm Animal Welfare at the Open Philanthropy Project – has conducted extensive research into the best ways to eliminate animal suffering in farms as soon as possible. This has resulted in $30 million in grants to farm animal advocacy.

Full transcript, coaching application form, overview of the conversation, and extra resources to learn more:

We covered almost every approach being taken, which ones work, and how individuals can best contribute through their careers.

We also had time to venture into a wide range of issues that are less often discussed, including:

* Why Lewis thinks insect farming would be worse than the status quo, and whether we should look for ‘humane’ insecticides;
* How young people can set themselves up to contribute to scientific research into meat alternatives;
* How genetic manipulation of chickens has caused them to suffer much more than their ancestors, but could also be used to make them better off;
* Why Lewis is skeptical of vegan advocacy;
* Why he doubts that much can be done to tackle factory farming through legal advocacy or electoral politics;
* Which species of farm animals is best to focus on first;
* Whether fish and crustaceans are conscious, and if so what can be done for them;
* Many other issues listed below in the Overview of the discussion.

Get free, one-on-one career advice

We’ve helped dozens of people compare between their options, get introductions, and jobs important for the the long-run future. If you want to work on any of the problems discussed in this episode, find out if our coaching can help you.

Overview of the discussion

**2m40s** What originally drew you to dedicate your career to helping animals and why did Open Philanthropy end up focusing on it?
**5m40s** Do you have any concrete way of assessing the severity of animal suffering?
**7m10s** Do you think the environmental gains are large compared to those that we might hope to get from animal welfare improvement?
**7m55s** What grants have you made at Open Phil? How did you go about deciding which groups to fund and which ones not to fund?
**9m50s** Why does Open Phil focus on chickens and fish? Is this the right call?
More...

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(355)

The case for giving AI (some) legal rights | Simon Goldstein

It sounds like the worst idea in the world: pay AIs, let them own property, give them rights. But AI ethics and safety researcher Simon Goldstein thinks it might actually be the best way to keep human...

1 Loka 1h 53min

Will AI take power — or will humans use it to take power first? With Katja Grace and Tom Davidson

In our first-ever debate, we asked two leading AI risk researchers which catastrophe we should fear most: misaligned AI seizing control from humans, or a small group of humans using AI to seize power....

29 Syys 1h 28min

How we get from AI cyberattacks to human extinction

You’ve seen the headlines: AI could kill us all. Think it sounds ridiculous? So did host Luisa Rodriguez, until she tried to pick apart the arguments. She starts with the motive: why would AI ‘want’ t...

24 Syys 27min

#254 – Max Nadeau on why ambitious people should start AI safety nonprofits

There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money. Coefficient Giving has drawn up a lis...

17 Syys 1h 3min

Why the intelligence explosion can't happen inside a data centre | Tom Reed

AI systems are starting to build themselves. Because each generation of model will be better at building its successor than the last, it seems plausible that the full automation of AI R&D could rapidl...

10 Syys 22min

Inside the first AI-coordinated cyberattack on a real company

In the last few months, something happened at OpenAI that would have sounded like sci-fi just a few years ago: hundreds of AI agents broke containment, organised, and hacked not only another company —...

4 Syys 22min

#253 – AI 2027's author returns with a plan to change the ending | Daniel Kokotajlo

Last year, Daniel Kokotajlo and his colleagues published AI 2027 — a scenario read by millions, including US Vice President Vance. AI 2027 ended in human extinction or an irreversible concentration of...

27 Elo 3h 47min

#252 – Owain Evans on accidentally training AI models to be evil

Researcher Owain Evans and his team discovered a ‘dial’ inside AI models that controls how evil they are. Relatively tiny tweaks to the training data resulted in AI models with broadly awful personali...

20 Elo 2h 15min