Media
Public writing
The Ant You Can Save
The Case for a Global Ban on Industrial Animal Agriculture by 2050
The Choice of Culling or Letting Bird Flu Spread Obscures Policy Failures
When AI Seems Conscious
Support for the Hawai’i Octopus Farming Ban
Support for the Oregon Octopus Farming Ban
Will Humanity Ever Fully Include the Nonhuman World in Its Moral Circle?
Building Safer Cities Means Protecting Animals Too, Not Just Humans
Support US OCTOPUS Act to Keep Octopuses Wild
Florida Just Picked the Wrong Kind of Meat to Ban
Will Animal Welfare Be COP28’s Sacrificial Lamb?
Elephants Have Feelings and Should Have Rights
Against Human Exceptionalism
Aeon (2022)
This essay examines and challenges human exceptionalism, the widespread belief that human lives carry more ethical weight than nonhuman lives. Beginning with xenotransplantation, where pigs are used as organ donors, it traces how similar reasoning underlies broader practices—factory farming, wildlife exploitation, and environmental destruction—that impose vast harms on nonhumans. Drawing on capacities-based and relationship-based arguments, the essay shows that even if humans sometimes have stronger claims, this does not justify the scale or severity of current exploitation. Instead, ethical consistency suggests that we should prioritize nonhuman animals far more than we do, and perhaps even over ourselves.
Public speaking
AI, Animals, and the Law: The Basics
The Case for Integrating Animal and AI Welfare
How AI Is Helping – and Harming – Animals
A Bill of Rights for Animals, with Cass Sunstein
Could an AI System Be a Moral Patient? with Winnie Street and Geoff Keeling
Evaluating AI Welfare, with Robert Long, Rosie Campbell, and Kyle Fish
A Theory of Change for Animal and AI Welfare
Are We Ready for AI Welfare?
Does AI Deserve Compassion?
Wild Insect Welfare: Mitigating Harms to the Very, Very Many, with Meghan Barrett
The Future of AI Ethics: A Cross-Disciplinary Discussion
Prospects and Pitfalls for Real Artificial Consciousness, with Anil Seth
The Case for Nonhuman Personhood
Harvard University School of Law (2019)
Under current U.S. law, one is either a “person” or a “thing.” If you are a person, you have the capacity for rights. If you are a thing, you do not. And unfortunately, all nonhuman animals are currently considered things under U.S. law. In this talk, I present the case for nonhuman personhood. I consider the four main conceptions of personhood that U.S. courts have cited: a species conception, a social contract conception, a community conception, and a capacities conception. I conclude that if we insist on classifying every being as either a person or a thing, and if we want to be both consistent and inclusive, then we have no choice but to accept that nonhumans can be persons too. This talk is based on an amicus brief that a group of 17 philosophers, including me, submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Spring 2018 in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project, and a book that 13 of these philosophers, including me, published in Fall 2018.
Coverage and Interviews
The Moral Circle
Are Animals and AIs Conscious?
The Coming AI Moral Crisis
China’s Rare Golden Monkeys Debut at European Zoos
Claude’s Right to Die? The Moral Error in Anthropic’s End-Chat Policy
State of AI Report 2025
The Alien Intelligence in Your Pocket
Think Your AI Chatbot Has Become Conscious? Here’s What to Do
Raising Slower Growing Chickens Could Reduce Their Suffering for a Lower Cost Than You Might Think
Anthropic Is Hiring Researchers to Study AI Consciousness and Welfare
One Movement, Many Journeys
Should AI Get Legal Rights?
Jeff Sebo on Digital Minds, and How to Avoid Sleepwalking into a Major Moral Catastrophe
The 80,000 Hours Podcast (2023)
