How AI could improve the lives of trillions of animals

Apr 2, 2026

Constance Li, founder of Sentient Futures who steers AI and emerging tech toward improving nonhuman lives. She discusses the vast scale of farmed-animal suffering, precision livestock farming using sensors and computer vision, research into AI-assisted interspecies communication, genetic welfare possibilities, and the biggest hurdles of funding and attention.

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INSIGHT

AI Safety Frameworks Apply To Animals Too

'AI for animals' spans governance, alignment, and access: we must ask how AI systems will affect animals and who gets to use them.
Constance Li argues the AI-safety framework needs analogues focused on non-human impacts.

ADVICE

Monitor Farms Continuously To Catch Problems Early

Use sensors and AI to continuously monitor farms for disease, behavior, and environmental metrics to enable earlier, individualized interventions.
Constance Li highlights cameras, audio, temperature and water monitors feeding models that flag sickness or stress.

ANECDOTE

Computer Vision Detects Improper Stunning In Slaughterhouses

Deloitte Netherlands built a computer vision system for slaughterhouses that detects improper stunning in pigs by spotting eye movement and twitching.
The system helps target training and reduce unnecessary suffering at slaughter.

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We think a lot about how AI will affect humanity, and for good reason. But AI could have an enormous impact on the trillions of animals that share our world (for better or worse), and almost nobody is talking about it.

In this episode, we talk with Constance Li, founder of Sentient Futures, an organization working to make sure AI and other emerging technologies improve the lives of animals rather than harm them.

We touch on:

The enormous scale of animal suffering today, and why AI could either worsen or improve it depending on the decisions we make.
Using computer vision and sensors to monitor animals and optimize for their welfare rather than just productivity.
The research that’s being done to use AI to communicate with animals and what it’s already telling us about their well-being.
Other sentient beings that could be impacted by emerging technologies, like artificial minds and biocomputing.

Timestamps:

0:00 Cold open

1:57 Why AI and animals is an overlooked combination

4:46 The staggering scale of factory farming

8:26 How a physician became an animal welfare advocate

10:19 What Sentient Futures does day-to-day

11:38 What "AI for animals" actually means

14:23 Why the organization was renamed Sentient Futures, and the question of AI moral patients

18:08 The biggest misconceptions about AI for animals

20:26 What is precision livestock farming?

24:46 Best and worst-case scenarios for AI in farms

27:46 Communication across species: promise and limitations

35:56 Genetic welfare and using genetics in farms

43:34 What a best-case scenario for AI and animals looks like in the next 5–10 years

47:11 The biggest hurdles: funding and attention

48:39 How to get involved with Sentient Futures

50:44 What gives Constance hope

On the Existential Hope Podcast hosts Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers from the Foresight Institute invite scientists, founders, and philosophers for in-depth conversations on positive, high-tech futures.

Full transcript, listed resources, and more: https://www.existentialhope.com/podcasts

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