Artificial meat is harder than artificial intelligence — Lewis Bollard

Today I'm chatting with Lewis Ballard who is farm animal welfare program director at Open Philanthropy and Open Philanthropy is the biggest charity in this animal welfare space. So Lewis, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. >> Thanks for having me on. >> Okay, first question.

At some point we'll have AGI. How do you just think about the problem you're trying to solve? Are you trying to make conditions more tolerable for the next 10 years until AI solves this problem for us? or is there some reason to think that the interventions we're making in terms of improvements like an over sexing or cage-free eggs etc will have an impact beyond this transformative moment.

>> I think that the end of factory farming is far from inevitable. Every year we're factory farming about 2% more animals globally. I think there are two possible trajectories we could go down. One is the trajectory that we have been on for the last century which is technology has made factory farming ever more efficient resulted in ever more animals being abused in ever more intensive ways.

>> There is a trajectory where we reduce the number of animals on factory farms where we reduce the suffering of each of those animals. So even if we get AGI I I am really optimistic that that will accelerate forms of technological progress. It will bring us better alternative proteins. It will improve the humane technology.

But there are still huge cultural and political obstacles to alternatives. So the cultural obstacles are that most people want real meat. I mean, most people have the option already of plant-based meat that tastes about as good as real meat. And that's it.

I don't know. >> So this is the debate. That's fair. This is a debate.

But I don't think that's just the obstacle that people have. I think there are a lot of people who say, I'm just not interested in, you know, the alternative. I want the real thing. And then there's also the political obstacle.

So let's say that AGI solves cultivated meat for us. >> Well, cultivated meat's already illegal in seven US states. It's it's might soon be illegal in the entire European Union. So by the time we get AGI, will they even be able to sell it anywhere?

So again, I think there's a huge amount ...