How to reduce the ethical dangers of AI-assisted farming | Aeon Essays

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At a Best Genetics Group pig-breeding farm in Chifeng, China; 27 February 2022. Photo courtesy Tingshu Wang/Reuters by Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert & Jonathan Birch + BIO At a Best Genetics Group pig-breeding farm in Chifeng, China; 27 February 2022. Photo courtesy Tingshu Wang/Reuters is a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and a postdoctoral associate in philosophy at the University of Oxford, UK. Her research interests include animal ethics, practical ethics, moral theory, and philosophy of emotion. is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and principal investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sentience project. He is the author of The Philosophy of Social Evolution (2017) and The Edge of Sentience (forthcoming, 2024). Edited byNigel Warburton Imagine a long black shipping container, packed with living animals. You tip in some human food waste and walk away. AI does the rest, controlling feeding and growth ‘so

Imagine a long black shipping container, packed with living animals. You tip in some human food waste and walk away. AI does the rest, controlling feeding and growth ‘so the farmer does not have to’, as the company blurb puts it. What are these animals inside – your animals? It’s not important. You don’t need to know anything about them or have any experience handling them. If problems arise, engineers can troubleshoot them remotely. And when it’s time for ‘harvesting’, no need for a slaughterhouse: AI handles that too. The animals live and die in a literal black box, only leaving as a…

How to reduce the ethical dangers of AI-assisted farming | Aeon Essays

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