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.

Two recent books, Healthy Eating Policyand Political Philosophy and Food, Justice, and Animals, offer promising frameworks for food justice. However, we argue that these frameworks need to be expanded to account for aquatic animals, given their sentience, diversity, and vulnerability. We examine the global health, environmental, and socio-economic impacts of aquaculture and industrial fishing, and consider whether and how aquatic animals can count as stakeholders and participants in public reason frameworks. We also assess the rights aquatic animals might hold under food justice theories. Without settling every question, we suggest that properly protecting aquatic animals will require rethinking aquatic animal farming and fishing.

There tends to be disagreement in animal and environmental ethics between individuals, who hold that individuals are the primary units of moral analysis, and ecocentrists, who hold that ecological wholes are the primary units of moral analysis. In this essay I suggest that the concept ‘primary unit of moral analysis’ is ambiguous, and that when we disambiguate it, we can identify a plausible view according to which individualists are correct in one sense and ecocentrists are correct in another sense. Specifically, in both science and ethics, we can make a distinction between the most “subtitle”: “basic”, units of analysis and the most “subtitle”: “helpful”, units of analysis, and we can say that smaller beings like individuals tend to be more basic but that larger beings like ecological wholes tend to be more helpful in many contexts.

This article argues that efforts to mitigate the climate impacts of animal agriculture should consider animal welfare and public health effects as well. We illustrate this point by discussing potential animal welfare and public health impacts of three popular approaches: first, “sustainable intensification” methods, aimed at maintaining or increasing agricultural output while limiting emissions and land conversion; second, “species shift” approaches, which focus on shifting diets away from consumption of high-emitting ruminants and towards animals who emit fewer GHG emissions; and third, promoting shifts away from animal products altogether through systemic dietary change. We show that some of these approaches may introduce new, significant, and unnecessary risks to animal welfare and public health that merit consideration.

Discussions of nonhuman research ethics tend to focus on what we owe nonhuman research subjects in laboratory settings. But humans make critical decisions about these animals outside the lab, too, during breeding, transportation, and end-of-study protocols. This article reviews extra-lab risks and harms to nonhuman research subjects, focusing on the most commonly and intensively used animals like rodents and fishes, and argues that extra-lab risks and harms merit ethical consideration by researchers and institutional review. It then describes how different moral frameworks for assessing nonhuman subjects research might apply to current practices, and concludes that proper consideration of risks and harms beyond the lab would make animal research even harder to justify in many cases.

How should we update our moral thinking if it turns out to be possible for a single token mental state — a feeling of pleasure, displeasure, desire, frustration, or something else relevant to welfare — to belong to two or more subjects at once? Some philosophers think that such sharing of mental states might already occur, whereas others foresee it as a potential consequence of advances in neurotechnology and AI. Yet different types of case generate opposite intuitions: if two mostly-distinct people share a few mental states, it seems we should count the value of those states twice, but if two physically-distinct beings share their whole mental lives, it seems we should count the value of that life once. We suggest that these conflicting intuitions can be reconciled if the mental states that matter for welfare have a holistic character.

We argue that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future. That means that the prospect of AI welfare and moral patienthood — of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance — is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future. It is an issue for the near future, and AI companies and other actors have a responsibility to start taking it seriously. We also recommend three early steps that AI companies and other actors can take: They can, first, acknowledge that AI welfare is an important and difficult issue (and ensure that language model outputs do the same); second, start assessing AI systems for evidence of consciousness and robust agency; and, third, prepare policies and procedures for treating AI systems with an appropriate level of moral concern.

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.

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.

According to what we call the Emotional Alignment Design Policy, artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions that reflect the entities’ capacities and moral status, or lack thereof. This principle can be violated in two ways: by designing an artificial system that elicits stronger or weaker emotional reactions than its capacities and moral status warrant (overshooting or undershooting), or by designing a system that elicits the wrong type of emotional reaction (hitting the wrong target). Although presumably attractive, practical implementation faces several challenges including: How can we respect user autonomy while promoting appropriate responses? How should we navigate expert and public disagreement and uncertainty about facts and values? To what extent should designs conform to versus attempt to alter user assumptions and attitudes?

This essay 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.

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 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 this chapter I argue that we should extend moral consideration to a much wider range of beings than we currently do. There are at least two reasons why. The first reason is epistemic: We should be open to the possibility that a very wide range of beings have moral status, and we should extend at least some moral consideration to these beings accordingly. The second reason is practical: We now have the power to impact a very wide range of beings, both within and across species, nations, and generations. The upshot is that we should extend at least some moral consideration to quintillions of beings – including invertebrates, plants, and some artificial intelligences – with revisionary implications for many moral theories.

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.

Goldstein & Kirk-Giannini (2025) argue some language-agent AI systems may already have wellbeing — even without phenomenal consciousness — because leading theories of mind (e.g., representationalism, dispositionalism, and interpretationism) and wellbeing (e.g., desire and objective-list views) imply that belief, desire, knowledge, and achievement can ground wellbeing. They also urge precaution given scale. I personally feel skeptical: without conscious feeling, beliefs and desires seem insufficient for having a stake in outcomes. Yet under moral and scientific uncertainty, multiple routes (robust agency or consciousness) yield a non-negligible chance of AI wellbeing, warranting concern. If we set a low bar for minimal considerability, the implications extend to plants, fungi, microbes, and current AIs — shifting focus to how we weigh risks.