This is the subject of my latest column for Bloomberg, here is an excerpt:
However, there is better news regarding animal welfare. The cause is on the verge of another great victory – and it has been achieved through technology rather than rhetoric.
The first major development is Ozempic and other weight loss drugs in the GLP-1 class. According to one estimate, 25,000 Americans start taking these weight-loss drugs each week, and 93 million Americans may meet the criteria to use them. The spread of such drugs in many other countries is possible, especially since they seem to produce health benefits in addition to weight loss.
The idea is simple: People lose weight with these drugs because they eat less, and eating less often means eating less meat. And less meat consumption results in less factory farming.
This should be counted as a major victory for animal welfare advocates, although it was not through their own efforts. No one had to convert to vegetarianism, and since these drugs offer other benefits, this change in balance is self-sustaining and can grow exponentially. Yes, it is only a partial victory, but a complete victory was impossible.
And this:
There is a third reason why animal welfare advocates are optimistic. It’s a guess, but now it seems less crazy than before: Super-powered AI can help us observe and learn animal languages, thus allowing humans to converse with at least smarter (or at least more talkative?) animals. There is work at UC-Berkeley to talk to sperm whales by recording their language and translating it into English, using techniques derived from large language models.
If we could talk to animals – and hear their complaints and descriptions of their suffering – wouldn’t we be less likely to eat them and mistreat them? How would we respond to the pleas of dolphins to stop using our nets to catch tuna, a process that kills many dolphins?
This is one chance this strategy may backfire; Dolphins, for example, may not be as cute as people think. Still, it holds at least some opportunity for change in the way we humans think about our relationship with all animals.
Do you think there are animals that we can talk about eating vegetables, if only small changes? If not, why should we have so much hope that people will change? Or maybe underneath it all, do you think people are special?
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