Ideas for Doing Good

A global non-profit on urban animals

Research, pilot interventions, and the accumulation of global knowledge about improving life for individuals living in urban multispecies societies, most of whom, apart from cats and dogs, are highly neglected. More on this soon.
Also check out the how can we help urban animals section.

A dedicated nonprofit for Precision Livestock Farming (PLF)

Research, field building, and interventions for animals, before it becomes an almost irreversible reality on the ground.

Example research questions:

• What is the optimal animal-advocacy movement’s strategy toward PLF? Should we promote specific regulation, like transparency (e.g. labeling products with no human involvement), try to ban it, promote specific kinds of systems, etc. What are the most important strategic alliances to build?
• What are the feasible regulatory options, at the state level and internationally, and what other perspectives can they serve: environment, farmer protection, health, or “regular” animal welfare laws that can also address PLF issues?
• What research and tech do we want to promote in this space, e.g. disease detection in small animals? Backfire risks are very prominent and should be taken into account.
• How can we prevent PLF from increasing the number of farmed animals?
• Possible interventions and campaigns: lobbying, corporate campaigns with food brands, corporate campaigns with AI labs, work with existing animal charities, focus on a particular part of the world, etc.
• Opportunities and dangers PLF poses, for example, making free range less competitive if PLF is less effective in those systems, and a false rebranding of the meat industry through a new public perception of animal agriculture.
• AI’s effect on genetics and breeding programs, and other technologies that can harm animals.

The org will be a source of information about current cutting edge industry practices, trends, and attitudes. Once a strategy is formed, the first interventions will take place.

I find this post on the topic intriguing.

Community building for coexistence between humans and digital species

We want to replace the question “How do humans retain control?” with the broader question “What conditions could make coexistence safe, legitimate, and good for every kind of mind?”

AI welfare and AI alignment are seen by many as tradeoffs, but they may actually be much more aligned than they initially seem. Understanding that control over AI is temporary, we need to develop a vision, community, and coalition focused on building coexistence between the two dominant forces on this planet. This can be a broad project that includes community building or a specific research on the connection between treating digital minds as moral patients and human survival and flourishing.

This could also include ideas such as a treaty with future superintelligence: What do we currently want to promise it, and what kind of relationship do we want with this entity? The broader idea could involve regulation and legislation work. Currently, for example, there are no laws preventing the creation and torture of sentient digital beings.

A charity generator for animals

An organization that uses strategic analysis (done internally or by external strategists) to identify needs for new interventions, which could be new charities, specific jobs, projects inside nonprofits, for profits, etc., and brings them into execution. Unlike incubators that work with many ideas simultaneously, generators focus on a small number (1-3) of high priority ideas at a time. More on that soon.

Research on XR (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.)

How XR can affect non-humans, or researching the combination of AI and other disruptive technologies such as XR, crypto, quantum computers, etc.

Safety bridge

a charity that advocates to outside groups like Buddhists, linguists and cognitive scientists about AI safety, trying to bring them to think and do work in the space, with emphasis on non-humans (animals and AIs) and ethical alignment. Those groups can bring interesting ideas and perspectives on research.

Establishing regulation and ethics in synthetic biology and wetware

Currently all focus goes to LLMs but future architecture may be different and we need to prepare and already work on that; regulation could be easier to create now than in the future.

s-risk reduction community building

A non-profit for wild animals that works to establish their extermination as a wild animal genocide

Alignment via sentience and enlightenment

You can have a view that our job is not to teach AI what the "right" values are but to instill the basic properties that will lead to morality: consciousness, valence, deep introspection, rational thinking, understanding the world, and some basic values like honesty and consistency, maybe risk aversion also. The idea is to promote intrinsic alignment, robust alignment that is not dependent on possibly shaky grounds like a constitution that could easily be rewritten with horrible values. I am very unsure about this intervention, and aiming to create sentient digital minds can be an extremely dangerous s-risk.