AI has a shot of hope. Like much of Silicon Valley, many attendees at the summit subscribed to the idea that AI could dramatically increase their productivity—though their goal is not to maximize the lifespan of their seeds, but rather, to prevent as much animal suffering as possible. Some have figured out how to use cloud code and custom agents to handle coding and administrative tasks in their advocacy work. Others envisioned developing new, cheaper ways to cultivate meat using scientific AI tools such as AlphaFold, which helps molecular biology research by predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins.
But the real talking point of the event was the flood of funding that supporters expect will soon be committed to animal welfare charities — not by individual megadonors, but by AI lab employees.
Much of the funding for the farm animal welfare movement, which includes nonprofits advocating for better conditions on farms, promoting veganism, and endorsing farmed meat, comes from people in the tech industry, says Lewis Bollard, managing director of the farm animal welfare fund at Coefficient Giving, a philanthropic fund used for Coefficient Giving is backed by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskowitz and his wife Carrie Tuna, who are among a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires who embrace effective altruism.
“It’s just been an area that’s been completely neglected by traditional philanthropists,” says Bollard, like the Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation. “It’s mainly the tech people who are open to (it).”