Constance Li

**Main points in favor of this grant**

• I think that research into the possible sentience or moral patienthood of digital minds is important and neglected. Relatively few philosophy academics are researching this matter and I suspect humanity might soon create highly intelligent forms of artificial life, potentially worth of human-level moral patienthood, but with radically different attitudes in society.
• Conferences are a time-tested way to connect and develop a research community. I support further conferences on research into the potential sentience and moral patienthood of digital minds.
• The conference was surprisingly cheap to fund! The conference organizers clearly care deeply about the cause areas they support, as they ran the event with no guaranteed funding.

**Donor's main reservations**

• I don’t think that aligning early transformative AI systems with the interests of nonhumans is a good idea. I believe that the period during which transformative AI emerges will likely be fraught with risk and rapid societal change. I principally want to prevent catastrophic risk and value lock-in during this period and adding further complexity to the challenge of making AI corrigible to robust democratic institutions seems bad. I’d rather build corrigible AI to reduce catastrophic risk and prevent value lock-in, then proceed with a “long reflection” or other deep investigation into the all-things-considered best approach towards maximizing nonhuman flourishing within appropriate constraints (though I support efforts to improve animal welfare today).
• I think that the conference organizers could have supported further researchers in AI sentience or moral patienthood, such as Robert Long, Patrick Butlin, or any of their coauthors here.
• I think that the animal welfare aspects of the conference might make this project relatively easy for animal welfare donors to fund. It’s not clear to me why the conference organizers didn’t apply to EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund.

**Process for deciding amount**

I decided to fund the fraction of the project’s cost that went towards supporting sessions on AI sentience or moral patienthood, as opposed to using AI to further animal rights or facilitate interspecies communication. I estimated this from the ~1/4 of sessions focused on digital minds and rounded upwards: 1/4 * $5500 = $1375 ~ $1500. I don’t oppose using AI to improve interspecies communication or support animal welfare (both seem positive), but I prefer to dedicate my Manifund resources to projects where I am more counterfactual or impactful.

**Conflicts of interest**

I don't believe there are any conflicts of interest to declare.

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AI Animals and Digital Minds 2025, Nov 2024

I funded this project for 1/4 of its cost based on the fraction of digital minds content from last year.