Experts have often assumed animals lack consciousness until proven otherwise, but some now suggest changing this presumption. Options include assuming consciousness in all animals, all living beings, all with neurons, all with complex cognition, or even all beings. I assess these options scientifically and ethically, arguing that different defaults make sense in different contexts. For example, a broad assumption of consciousness may be better for ethical theory and scientific practice, since it supports precaution and innovation. However, a narrower assumption may be better for scientific theory and ethical practice, since it works with existing evidence and institutions. By adopting multiple context-specific defaults, we can better serve both science and ethics.

This paper argues for ethical oversight in insect research. Despite the widespread use of insects in scientific and medical research, they receive little to no protection under existing animal welfare regulations. We show that many insects exhibit cognitive and behavioral markers of sentience and argue that, when there is uncertainty about whether an animal is sentient, we have a responsibility to consider welfare risks for that animal. We then explore how ethical oversight for insect research could be implemented by adapting existing frameworks for vertebrate research while accounting for the unique challenges posed by insects as research subjects. While extending oversight to insects would require overcoming numerous barriers, failing to do so risks both moral negligence and public mistrust.

Despite growing recognition of the importance of One Health, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development omits explicit reference to animal health and welfare. This report, produced by Stockholm Environment Institute and the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, argues that this omission undermines policy coherence and overlooks critical interconnections between human, animal, and environmental health. Drawing on expert analysis across all 17 SDGs, we identify three complementary pathways for integration: strengthening animal welfare consideration in current SDG implementation, introducing new targets and indicators aligned with existing Goals, and establishing a dedicated Goal on animal health and welfare. As governments prepare for post-2030 deliberations, systematic integration of animal health and welfare offers opportunities to address root causes of health, environmental, and development challenges.

This paper makes a case for insect and AI legal personhood. Humans share the world not only with large animals like chimpanzees and elephants but also with small animals like ants and bees. In the future, we might also share the world with sentient or otherwise morally significant AI systems. These realities raise questions about what kind of legal status insects, AI systems, and other nonhumans should have in the future. At present, debates about legal personhood mostly exclude these kinds of individuals. However, I argue that our current framework for assessing legal personhood, coupled with our current framework for assessing risk and uncertainty, imply that we should treat these kinds of individuals as legal persons. I also argue that we have good reason to accept this conclusion rather than alter these frameworks.

In their paper “AI Wellbeing,” Simon Goldstein and Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini argue that some language agents plausibly possess the capacity for wellbeing and moral standing even if they lack consciousness. My response is ambivalent. On the one hand, I am skeptical of theories of wellbeing and moral standing that lack a consciousness requirement. On the other hand, I agree with Goldstein and Kirk-Giannini (2025) that several leading theories of wellbeing and moral standing jointly imply that some language agents may be welfare subjects and moral patients and that this implication should be taken seriously. In fact, I argue that if we fully account for moral and descriptive uncertainty, we may need to lower the bar for moral standing even further, to include entities with only minimal forms of goal-orientedness or information processing. The question of whether and how to account for uncertainty might thus determine whether the arguments in “AI Wellbeing” go too far — or not far enough.

This chapter makes the general case for including animal welfare in local policymaking, with special focus on institutional and infrastructural change. We start by discussing the importance of animal welfare for the One Health framework, along with key questions about animal welfare. We then discuss general principles and policies that can guide cities in building multispecies urban infrastructure. For example, cities can implement bird-friendly building materials, improve road design and operation, provide guidance for incorporating animal shelter and habitat into green infrastructure, and shift their lawn maintenance practices. These and other policies have the potential to benefit humans, animals, and the environment alike.

We examine how society might respond to the possibility of AI consciousness by drawing parallels with human attitudes toward animal consciousness. Our analysis reveals that perceptions of AI consciousness will likely be influenced by appearance and behavior, social and economic roles, and moral biases. However, AI systems may benefit from their advanced cognitive capacities while facing challenges due to their non-biological origins. We argue that attitudes toward AI consciousness remain malleable, making this a critical moment for research and policy development. We call for urgent interdisciplinary research on the science of AI consciousness, public attitudes about this issue, and ethical frameworks for navigating potential societal disagreement and ensuring thoughtful preparation.

In this paper (co-sponsored by the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy; the Centre for the Governance of AI; and the Global Risk Behavioral Lab), we survey 635 AI researchers and 838 U.S. participants about the possibility of AI systems with subjective experience, as well as on the moral, legal, and political status of AI systems with subjective experience. Neither group predominantly believes such systems are imminent, but many forecast their existence within this century. Both groups support multidisciplinary expertise in assessing AI subjective experience and favor implementing safeguards now. While support for AI welfare protections was lower than for animal or environmental protection, majorities agreed that AI systems with subjective experience should act ethically and be held accountable.

The emerging science of animal consciousness is advancing through investigations of behavioral and neurobiological markers associated with subjective experience across diverse species. Research on honeybee pessimism, cuttlefish planning, and self-recognition in cleaner wrasse fish provides evidence that consciousness may be widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Although the field faces uncertainties—stemming from the absence of a secure, unified theory of consciousness and the complexity of differentiating conscious from unconscious processes—these investigations underscore the value of open-minded, interdisciplinary inquiry. By exploring consciousness across taxa, researchers can collect valuable evidence and set the stage for a more inclusive understanding of the tree of life.

This chapter examines the ethical implications of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for wild animals. While ART is widely used to support biodiversity, prevent extinction, and enhance genetic diversity, its effects on individual animal welfare are often overlooked. We argue that many wild animals have the capacity for welfare and thus warrant moral consideration. We then analyze the direct and indirect welfare impacts of ART, including the invasive procedures involved, the disruption of natural behaviors, and the ethical implications of prioritizing species survival over individual well-being. Given the urgency of biodiversity loss and climate change, ethical scrutiny of ART can help guide more just and effective conservation strategies that prioritize both ecological and individual well-being.

The field of AI safety considers whether and how AI development can be safe and beneficial for humans and other animals, and the field of AI welfare considers whether and how AI development can be safe and beneficial for AI systems. There is a prima facie tension between these projects, since some measures in AI safety, if deployed against humans and other animals, would raise questions about the ethics of constraint, deception, surveillance, alteration, suffering, death, disenfranchisement, and more. Is there in fact a tension between these projects? It depends in part on what sentient, agentic, or otherwise morally significant AI systems might need and what we might owe them. We argue that, all things considered, there is indeed a moderately strong tension—and it deserves more examination.

Industrial animal agriculture is both increasingly central to our global economy and increasingly harmful to humans, animals, and the environment, contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss, infectious disease emergence, antimicrobial resistance, and a variety of other problems. Fortunately, the global community has a long history of regulating products or processes that cause massive, unnecessary, and transboundary social, health, and environmental harms. By exploring precedents and instruments drawn from existing international law, this paper argues that a global ban on industrial animal agriculture is both possible and necessary to achieve alongside other global targets. It also proposes a pathway towards a global ban by 2050, which proceeds via informational, financial, regulatory, and just transition policies.

Existing AI ethics frameworks focus largely on human interests, creating an urgent need to include nonhuman animals as stakeholders as well. This project examines how AI will affect nonhuman animals across sectors, with special focus on farmed animals, wild animals, urban animals, and other large and neglected nonhuman populations. It maps current and emerging AI applications that will interact with animals, assesses the ethical issues they raise, and identifies gaps in existing research and policy. The project will produce concrete, evidence-based recommendations and aims to inform both research and policy related to AI governance. (This project is a collaboration with the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE.)

Farmed and wild animals are among the most impacted and neglected stakeholders in health and environmental policy, and cities are uniquely positioned to act as policy innovators, incubators, and influencers. Yet the potential for cities to improve animal welfare, public health, and the environment remains largely untapped. Through procurement, infrastructure, conflict management, emergency response, and public education, cities can make significant progress for humans and nonhumans alike. Combining rigorous argument with engaging storytelling, this book develops a clear theory of change and shows how local policy can integrate animal welfare into mainstream governance while strengthening public health and environmental outcomes.

This chapter examines whether, and how, animals should fall within the scope of deontological moral theory. It surveys influential deontological views that include and exclude animals based on cognitive or relational features. It then assesses whether such stances are defensible and how animals might plausibly feature in deontological views moving forward. Finally, it explores the implications for killing, letting die, agriculture, experimentation, and political institutions. Throughout, the chapter emphasizes the theoretical importance of empirical and moral uncertainty for deontology and the practical stakes of extending deontological concern to animals.

This chapter examines the question of whether animals have moral rights, exploring its theoretical foundations and practical implications. Many humans acknowledge that animals matter morally, yet they often deny that animals possess rights in a robust sense. We survey key arguments for and against animal rights. We then consider which animals might have rights, which rights they might have, and how strong those rights might be. Recognizing animal rights could have far-reaching consequences for law, policy, and society. While moral and scientific uncertainty persists, we argue that this uncertainty should not prevent us from taking seriously the possibility that our current systems systematically violate animal rights and that we have an urgent responsibility to reassess and reform our treatment of other animals.

This chapter examines the moral, legal, and political standing of animals, plants, and fungi in the context of climate justice. While the intrinsic value of nonhuman animals is increasingly recognized, skepticism persists about plants and fungi. We explore recent trends in ethics and science, including the “marker method” for assessing consciousness in nonhuman animals by searching for behavioral and anatomical properties associated with conscious experience in humans. Highlighting the complexities of plant and fungal cognition, behavior, and interdependence, we argue that these beings warrant further investigation despite the methodological challenges that they raise. We also explore implications of their potential moral, legal, and political significance in a world reshaped by human activity.

This report outlines welfare-centered local policies for managing human–wildlife conflict in cities. Aimed at U.S. municipalities (with broader relevance), it defines key concepts, situates conflicts on a spectrum from disputes to deep-rooted tensions, and stresses that harms often flow to animals as well as people. It explains local authority and constraints, then offers guiding principles—do no harm, prevention, coexistence, careful language, transparency, evidence-based adaptation, and equity. A practical menu follows: wildlife-sensitive design, bird-safe buildings, lighting and waste reforms, humane population management, emergency response and rehabilitation, and citywide planning and governance. The goal is durable, humane coexistence across urban communities.

This paper examines how to set priorities among a moral community that now plausibly includes all vertebrates, many invertebrates, and soon a wide range of AI systems. Beginning with forced-choice cases—saving a bat versus a bee, or an organic bee versus a robotic bee—I argue for a precautionary approach that grants moral consideration to any entity with a realistic chance of mattering. I then assess four factors bearing on priority-setting: probability of moral significance, magnitude of moral significance, relationality, and practicality. Each factor is important but risks anthropocentric bias. I propose using a Rawlsian “original position” heuristic to approximate impartiality.

When we judge that a dog is better off than a pig, we make an interspecies welfare comparison. When we judge that a dog is better off than a robot, we make an intersubstrate welfare comparison (in this case, between a being made out of carbon and a being made out of silicon). We survey the challenges associated with comparing the welfare impacts across species and substrates. Then, given that these challenges are likely to be ongoing and that one important purpose of interspecies and intersubstrate welfare comparisons is to inform decision making, we map out alternative strategies for accomplishing this goal. In particular, we examine the possibility of using multicriterial analysis and other tools for making decisions involving seemingly incomparable goods for making progress on this topic.

This project develops a philosophical framework for understanding digital embodiment and its moral implications. It asks whether and how digital minds could be embodied, what counts as a body part for a digital system, and how embodiment relates to consciousness, sentience, and agency. Drawing on work in philosophy of mind, animal ethics, AI ethics, and disability studies, it also examines whether and how embodiment shapes the phenomenal character of experience and whether it can ground welfare interests, moral rights, or legal protections. The primary output will be a collaborative, multidisciplinary report clarifying how embodiment should inform ethical and policy approaches to digital minds. (This project is a collaboration with the Future Impact Group.)