Will technology improve animal welfare?

 [[{“value”:”That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: There is, however, some better news on the animal welfare front. The cause is on the verge of some major victories — and they have been earned through technology rather than rhetoric. The first major development is Ozempic and the other weight-loss
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That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

There is, however, some better news on the animal welfare front. The cause is on the verge of some major victories — and they have been earned through technology rather than rhetoric.

The first major development is Ozempic and the other weight-loss drugs in the GLP-1 category. By one estimate, 25,000 Americans start taking these weight-loss drugs every week, and 93 million Americans may meet the criteria for using them. The spread of such drugs to many other countries is likely, especially since they seem to produce health gains above and beyond weight loss.

The logic is simple: People lose weight on these drugs because they eat less, and eating less usually means eating less meat. And less meat consumption results in less factory farming.

This should count as a major victory for animal welfare advocates, even though it did not come about through their efforts. No one had to be converted to vegetarianism, and since these drugs offer other benefits, this change in the equilibrium is self-sustaining and likely to grow considerably. Yes, it is only a partial victory, but total victory was unlikely anyway.

And this:

There is yet a third reason for animal welfare advocates to be optimistic. It is more speculative, but now seems less crazy than it used to: Super-powered AI could help us observe and learn animal languages, thus enabling humans to converse with at least some of the smarter (or at least more articulate?) animals. There is already a project at UC-Berkeley to converse with sperm whales by decoding their language and translating it to English, using techniques drawn from large-language models.

If we could talk with animals — and hear their complaints and descriptions of their own suffering — would we be less likely to eat them and treat them badly? How would we respond to the pleas of dolphins to stop using our nets to catch tuna, a process which kills many dolphins?

This is some chance this strategy could backfire; dolphins, for instance, may not be as charming as people think. Nonetheless, it holds at least some chance of a revolution in how we humans think of our relations with the rest of the animal kingdom.

Do you think there are any animals we could talk into vegetarianism, if only for marginal changes?  If not, why be so optimistic that humans will change?  Or maybe underneath it all, you do think that humans are somewhat special?

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 Economics, Philosophy, Uncategorized, Web/Tech