TURNING TO TECHNOLOGY: MEAT AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Author of Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence
There is wisdom in accepting the inevitable, of making peace with that we cannot change and trying to transform only that which can be transformed. But those following this path must check, periodically, to make sure the inevitable has not suddenly become evitable due to the breathtaking speed and possibilities offered by ongoing technological innovation.
For many years, we assumed the torturous existence of billions of factory-bred farm animals was just such an inevitability. The blame for this particularly common problem is often placed at the feet of farming industrialists (the quaint concept of the “farmer” applies to an almost vanished entity), but such operators are merely working to satisfy a seemingly insatiable demand. Such producers are caught in a zero-sum race: Improving the lives of their animals requires costs that are difficult to pass on to the consumer without hurting their business. And yet, consumers are not particularly to blame either: paying for more expensive foods under some vague promise of “better treatment for the animals” feels both individually pointless and impossible to verify.
Legal remedies, too, are not particularly forthcoming. To legislate against the torture of food animals, lawmakers would need to be able to specify, in full and unambiguous text, exactly what constitutes acceptable quality-of-life standards for all food animals. This is an ethically and logistically difficult task. Indeed, there is a closely related problem in safe artificial intelligence (AI) research. For the purpose of instructing a potentially superintelligent AI to deal with us in a way we would want to be treated, we would need to specify what would constitute an acceptable life for a human being. At this point, there is an almost irresistible urge to moralize: “If we don’t treat farm animals with compassion, why do we merit the same?” This urge needs to be resisted. It’s very easy to ask people to behave better from a moral perspective, but such entreaties rarely work. Trying to create new, widespread cultural norms is probably the hardest and least successful way of accomplishing a goal.
Turning to technology offers much better options. As civilizations become richer and technology improves, issues that were previously believed to be facts of life become solvable problems. Worker safety laws, clean air and water acts, the removal of lead from gasoline, and the creation of natural reserves are all examples of what happens when the cost of doing the right thing becomes very low. Innovation affords us the luxury of making the world better.
For the food industry, innovations in cultured and plant-based meats are improving to the extent that we should no longer assume issues like animal cruelty are set in stone. Cultured meats are in their infancy, while plant-based meats are a more mature technology. But in both cases, they have nowhere to go but up. Animal-free meat products are going to become tastier, more nutritious, more marketable, and cheaper in the future. Someday soon, they may even eclipse the quality, taste, and price of factory-farmed products.
When this happens, we may start to hear a chorus of appeals to nature and tradition. It will be argued that factory farming produces jobs, maintains important rural traditions, or is simply more natural and healthier than its alternatives. Laws will likely be passed to defend our current farming industry, and politicians will speak in its defense. But the same irresistible market forces that protect factory farming today spell its future demise. Once the change is complete, we may even be able to admit that, yes, it was a hideous atrocity (people seldom admit aloud that reality constrains moral choices) and that the world is better without it. And then, the inevitable will have become, well, evitable.