AI Ethics, Animal Ethics, and Interdisciplinary Research

My research has two main strands. The first concerns the two-way relationship between AI and morality: not only how we can teach morality to AI, but also whether humans might learn from AI if its moral reasoning improves. The second concerns the automation of philosophical research and its implications. I study how AI-generated papers and philosophical intuitions may change philosophical methods and the role of human researchers.

• Teaching morality to AI: For AI to act safely and in line with human intentions, it must understand moral problems and limit harmful bias. Bias can harm people and create discrimination and unfairness; it can also extend to nonhuman animals as speciesism. In the language models trained on English text that we studied, we found tendencies to associate animal names with harmful words and to describe animals as objects.
• Learning morality from AI: Human morality is not perfect. Our time, information, and attention are limited, and biases such as favoritism toward our own group keep us from judging fairly in every case. If AI's moral judgment improves, it may weigh more information and perspectives and support human decision-making.
• Generating philosophy papers: Starting from a particular source paper, we generated ideas, a structure, an outline, and finally a philosophical commentary that approached the source from a different perspective. Through this experiment, I examine what can be automated and where humans must still pose questions, verify the content, and take responsibility.
• AI-generated philosophical intuitions: Philosophers sometimes treat people's responses to thought experiments—hypothetical cases that ask how one would judge—as data for assessing theories. Could an AI's responses also serve as philosophical evidence? In some respects, current AI misreads questions less often than humans do, but its answers can also be sensitive to factors such as the order of the questions. I study both its promise and its limits.

I study animals as beings affected by politics and society, asking how their interests can be built into human institutions and technologies. I focus especially on where AI and animal ethics meet, the question of when animal experimentation can be justified, and ways for humans to deliberate for animals. I also study the problems of meat eating and animal agriculture, issues concerning wild animals, and relationships between robots and animals.

• Where AI meets animal ethics: AI may help protect wildlife through image recognition, support veterinary care, and prevent vehicle collisions with animals. It may also cause harm. Animal-tracking technology could be misused for poaching; AI could make factory farming, which raises large numbers of animals with an emphasis on efficiency, even more efficient; monitoring devices could disturb wildlife; and the large amounts of energy and water used to develop AI could burden ecosystems. Language AI may also spread representations that devalue animals. I study both benefits and harms, and how animals' interests can be built into AI design and governance.
• What could justify animal experimentation? One view holds that an experiment is permissible when its benefits outweigh the harm to animals. Yet results from animals do not always transfer directly to humans, and some studies never lead to treatments or other applications. When the expected benefit is uncertain, can weighing that benefit against the harm to animals be enough to justify the experiment? I examine research reliability, available alternatives, and whether an experiment is genuinely necessary.
• How can humans deliberate for animals? Animals cannot readily state their views in research or politics. I therefore help create workshops at academic conferences and other venues, where researchers, citizen advocates, and people involved in politics can discuss these issues across different roles. Through this practice, I examine how humans can understand animals' interests and contribute to political decision-making on their behalf, and whether such discussion genuinely benefits animals.

My research combines three perspectives: the history of utilitarianism, its development today, and my own lived experience. I re-examine Bentham's defense of minorities and animals, and consider whether effective altruism and longtermism can be supported on utilitarian grounds. I also study how ethics can address experiences outside social norms and the oppression of animals.

• Misconceptions about utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is often misunderstood as allowing minorities to be sacrificed for the happiness of the majority. Yet Jeremy Bentham, an early proponent of utilitarianism, defended women's suffrage, same-sex acts, and moral consideration for nonhuman animals. I study whether utilitarianism really permits the sacrifice of minorities by examining both its history and its theory.
• Effective altruism and longtermism: Effective altruism aims to do as much good as possible with limited resources, while longtermism gives serious weight to the interests of future generations. I study whether these movements can be supported on utilitarian grounds, and whether they give enough consideration to nonhuman beings such as animals.
• From lived experience: My experiences as a vegan, queer, nonbinary person draw my attention to how positions outside social norms are made invisible. I study how utilitarianism can help us understand these experiences and the systematic oppression of animals.